


Fireteam Vengeance

by NetRaptor



Series: Destiny and Destiny 2 stories [13]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Creepypasta, F/M, Fallen Barons, Grief/Mourning, Make the voices stop, Married Characters, Moral Ambiguity, Murder, Revenge, Scorn, Spider (Destiny) - Freeform, Sweet ghosts, Taken (Destiny) - Freeform, Tangled Shore, The Reef
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-07-23 07:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16154003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NetRaptor/pseuds/NetRaptor
Summary: After Cayde-6 is brutally murdered, Guardians Jayesh, Kari, and Nell set off for the Reef to avenge him. Aided by the enigmatic Spider, the Guardians realize that the Scorn Barons they are hunting are not the true enemy. However unwittingly, they have stepped into a conflict against the Darkness, itself. Contains all the spoilers for the Forsaken expansion.





	1. The passing of Cayde-6

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a loose adapt of the Destiny 2: Forsaken expansion. Certain things play out slightly differently than in the game, and all the spoilers are here. DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS.

Nell perched high up on a stack of crates, invisible in the shadows beneath an awning. Below her, the long line of people waiting to pay their respects to the dead Hunter Vanguard, Cayde-6, was finally petering out. People left in twos and threes, many with red-rimmed eyes, their arms around each other.

"Everyone loved him," Nell observed quietly to her ghost, Hadrian. "I only knew him a few months, and now he's gone. He was the only one around here who cracked any jokes."

"I don't know how the Vanguard will cope," Hadrian replied. "Commander Zavala has said that no Guardians will be spared to hunt his killers. There's too few Guardians left after the Red War. People are angry."

Nell slid down from her hiding place. "Let's go in. It's not so crowded, now."

With her ghost floating above her shoulder, Nell slipped down a long hallway to the room where Cayde's body lay in state beneath a white and gold Vanguard flag. For the viewing, it had been folded down so Cayde's face was visible. He was a blue Exo, and his robotic face was scored and scraped from every angle. His death had been a violent one. Beside him lay an empty ghost shell with no core, representing his dead ghost.

Nell gazed into his lifeless eyes. "I'm sorry, sir," she whispered. "For the few months you were my boss, you were a good one. You didn't deserve this."

Hadrian swept his body with a scan. "He's so damaged. And his spark is gone. I heard they killed his ghost, first."

"I heard that, too." A lump formed in Nell's throat. "I can't imagine losing you like that. It would shatter me."

She held out a hand. Hadrian landed in it, and she hugged him to her chest for a moment. "Poor Cayde. Poor Sundance."

Footsteps in the hall behind her. Hadrian vanished. Nell slipped to one side and stood behind the open door. She wasn't ready to leave, yet. Cayde seemed so alone, lying there without a ghost, and she couldn't bear to leave him.

Two warlocks entered, a man and a woman. They stood side by side, gazing at the fallen warrior. Nell waited for them to hurry up and leave. What did warlocks have to do with the Hunter Vanguard? Only Hunters should care, like Nell. Warlocks still had Ikora, for the Traveler's sake.

"Why did this have to happen?" the man murmured. He touched the flag. "He always hassled me, you know. Thought I should have been a Hunter."

"It's so unfair," the woman agreed. "I used to run patrols for him all the time. I think he had a joke for everyone in the Tower."

The man bowed his head. "Precious in the sight of the Traveler is the death of its Guardians."

The woman rubbed his back. "We'll get through this, Jayesh. Guardians do die."

Jayesh didn't answer. He stood there for a long time, head bowed. Nell thought he might be crying, but his back was to her and she couldn't tell.

The woman put her arm around him, and they stood together in silence, gazing at their fallen friend. Nell wished even more that they would leave.

Suddenly the man lifted his head and turned, looking straight at Nell. "You don't have to hide back there."

Nell started guiltily. The woman turned, too, surprised. "Where'd you come from?"

"I was here first," Nell snapped. "He was my Vanguard."

The man beckoned her forward. "It's all right. We all loved him. By the way, I'm Jayesh and this is Kari."

"I'm Nell," she replied, sulky because she wanted to be alone so she could cry in peace. She stepped up beside them and faced the body. "Do you think he went to heaven? I've asked people where Guardians go when they die, but nobody knows." The question was designed to make them uncomfortable so they'd leave. So far, it had worked on a lot of other Guardians.

Kari gave Jayesh a questioning look.

Jayesh drew a deep breath. "Well. Do you want the long answer or the short one?"

"Short one."

"Yes."

There was a short silence. Nell's curiosity stirred. "Yes? Just like that? Guardians go to heaven? But we're basically undead." This had bothered her since overhearing humans talking about it one day.

"Not really," Jayesh replied. "Your ghost resurrected you from your spark. Your soul. It only works as long as the spark persists. And Cayde, here ... his is departed. I can feel it. He's not here anymore."

"So, where'd he go?" Nell pressed.

"Well," Jayesh said, gazing at Cayde, "he'd go to the Traveler. First stop for Guardians and ghosts. It's basically in charge of us. From there, the Traveler ushers us to what it calls the realm of light. I'm not sure what it is, but it's where the Traveler came from. From what I've read, it's a place of rest. And healing." He laid his hand on the flag. "Cayde always did miss his son."

For some reason, this last remark hit Nell hard. Tears choked her and her face contorted.

Kari lifted an arm, offering a hug. Nell stepped into it and sobbed.

Then all three of them were crying, Nell noisily, Kari softly, Jayesh in silence. Never again would Cayde tease the young Guardians and tell them scary stories. Never again would he go out for spicy ramen, or go drinking with Banshee in the Tower canteen. Never again would he spin his hand cannon, the Ace of Spades, on one hand while talking about an absurd fight he had won.

"Why doesn't someone avenge him?" Nell burst out. "Criminals got him! They shot his ghost! We need to do something!"

"Shh," Kari whispered. "Some of us are doing something, Nell. But we can't talk about it."

"Not here," Jayesh agreed, wiping his face. "Although I think Cayde would approve. We shouldn't even tell Nell."

"I'm a Hunter," Nell snapped, her voice cracking. "He was my Vanguard. I may be new, but I know injustice when I see it."

Kari tugged Nell's arm. "Let's go out on the wall, where we won't be overheard."

The three left the viewing room as more Guardians were coming in. Nell realized that she looked like everyone else coming out - red-eyed and pale. So did her companions, who seemed nice enough ... for warlocks.

It was breezy out on the wall, making the robes of the warlocks flutter. The three Guardians picked a spot some distance from the Tower and out of earshot of the nearest guard tower.

Jayesh and Kari summoned their ghosts, both of whom wore expensive shells. "You guys are in on this, too," Jayesh told them. "Might as well bring out yours, Nell."

Nell summoned Hadrian with a flicker of protective indignation. Hadrian had a phobia of being taken apart, and wore the most basic shell instead of accepting an upgrade. But Nell had decorated him with blue, red, and green paint in geometric patterns, giving him a modern art look.

"This is Hadrian," Nell said, silently daring them to make fun of him.

"Nice shell!" Kari exclaimed. "I have a friend who makes custom ghost shells. I've been after him for years to sell them, they're so pretty."

Nell relaxed a fraction.

Jayesh motioned to each ghost. "This is Phoenix, and this is Neko. Be polite, you two."

"I'm always polite," Phoenix protested.

The ghosts studied each other for a moment.

"What makes you think we're trustworthy?" Hadrian asked.

"This touches all of us," Neko replied. "A Guardian and his ghost were mercilessly slaughtered."

"Right," said Jayesh. "Our friend, Madrid, accompanied Cayde to the Reef in the asteroid belt. Problems with the Prison of Elders there. He was with Cayde as he died of his wounds. Brought back his body."

"I met Madrid," Nell said. "He was nice to me."

"Not so nice, now," Kari said grimly. "He's gone vigilante. He's out in the Reef right now, hunting for the ones who killed Cayde."

"But Zavala said not to!" Nell gasped.

Jayesh nodded. "He did. And not everyone agrees. So there's a group of Guardians claiming to go on patrol to Mars who are accidentally winding up in the Reef. Navigation error, they're calling it." He glanced at Kari. "We're leaving tomorrow."

"Take me with you!" Nell implored. "I passed all my training with top scores. I've been running EDZ patrols. I can fight."

Jayesh and Kari exchanged another long look.

"Three's a fireteam," Kari said. "And if we find Madrid, four is better."

Jayesh sighed. "It's up to you, Nell. Cayde was your Vanguard and he was our friend. The thugs who killed him are beyond any foes you've faced so far. If we don't take them out, Cayde will only be the first in a long, long string of deaths."

Nell clenched her fists. "I want to fight. For Cayde. I want to hunt down the one who shot his ghost, and I want to see him writhe in pain as he dies." Heat flashed through her. The Golden Gun made of Light appeared in her hand, accidentally summoned in her wrath.

Jayesh and Kari watched her, unconcerned. "Better control that," Kari said. "The Reef is a rough place, and your Light will attract attention. Cool down."

Nell concentrated until the gun vanished and the heat inside her died to a steady warmth.

"It's settled, then," Jayesh said. He shook Nell's hand. "Welcome to Fireteam Vengeance."


	2. Arrival

"What are we doing, Kari?" Jayesh said.

He and Kari lay in bed that night, cuddled together under the blankets. Jayesh stared at the ceiling, and Kari could feel his tension. They'd only been married three months.

"What do you mean?" Kari said, running her fingers through his hair.

He sighed. "Heading to the Reef like this. Taking a greenhorn Guardian we don't know. Hunting down these Barons to murder them. We might as well serve ourselves to the Darkness on a platter."

"What else can we do, lovelight?" Kari said. "Cayde was murdered, first. The Vanguard doesn't want to risk anyone else, after these last two awful winters."

"Last winter wasn't as bad as the one before," Jayesh said. "At least there was no plague. But still. I know Cayde's killers need to be brought to justice. But randomly killing them isn't just."

"Ask the Fallen how their legal system works," Kari said. "It's quick and painful. They understand this, Jay. They expect Cayde to have avengers, and they'll be waiting for us. If they can kill us, too, then in their eyes, they are the ones in the right."

Jayesh clenched his jaw.

Kari studied the outline of his face. "I know this won't be easy. But our team needs you. Madrid needs you. Awoken already have one foot in the Darkness, and Madrid's in danger of losing himself out there. I've been to the Reef. It's an awful place."

They lay there in silence for a while. Jayesh was thinking this through. "So, you're saying that I'm the conscience of our fireteam?"

"Pretty much."

He heaved a sigh. "Leave it to the crazy warlock to preach justice to people obsessed with revenge. Yeah, that's a fun role. I'm headed to the Reef to bring Cayde's killers to justice, whatever form that takes. But if you expect me to keep all of you from falling to the Darkness ... Kari, I'm not strong enough for that. I'm afraid that I'll get out there, and _I'll_ fall to the Darkness. I read about what the Taken King did to the Awoken. Traces of that still linger."

"That's why we need you," Kari replied. "Your connection to the Traveler is so much stronger than ours."

"Kari ... heartspark ..." He pulled her close and kissed her. "If you fall ... I will, too. I'm not ... strong enough to watch you die."

"We're Guardians," she whispered. "We don't die."

"Tell that to Cayde," Jayesh said with sudden bitterness. "Tell that to all the Guardians lost in the Red War. This Prince Uldren is something more evil than I've ever dealt with. Ghaul at least wanted the Traveler's approval. He committed atrocities, but that was the theater of war. Uldren shot an unarmed, wounded man. That's a different kind of evil, Kari. And we're diving into it, completely unprepared."

"It's what we do," Kari said. "We had no intel on the Dreadnaught when we went in. We knew nothing about the Vault of Glass and the Black Garden. But we went anyway. And we figured it out and kicked ass. With the Reef, at least we know the territory."

Jayesh didn't answer for a while. The awful, grieving sense of injustice inside him warred with his educated terror of the Darkness. He'd nearly been Taken, once, himself. While the sheer horror of the experience had cauterized his dread of fighting Taken in battle, the thought of seeing his friends and wife devoured that way sickened him.

And for some reason, his ghost, Phoenix, was pouring love into his soul from the other direction.

Both their ghosts remained in phase while the Guardians were in bed together, giving them the illusion of privacy. Jayesh always knew Phoenix was there, his spark a constant, familiar presence. But tonight, as Jayesh voiced his fears, it affected his ghost deeply.

"What?" he thought.

"You," Phoenix replied. "I swear, no other Guardian in the Vanguard worries about these things. And it's just ... so beautiful."

"It's beautiful that I'm scared out of my mind over encountering the Darkness again?" Jayesh thought in bewilderment.

"It's that it matters to you," Phoenix replied. "And that you're so desperate to protect your team. That's the essence of Guardianhood." His spark brightened, warming Jayesh's heart.

"You're talking to Phoenix, aren't you?" Kari said.

Jayesh grinned ruefully. "You caught me."

"What's he saying?"

"He's getting all sentimental about me worrying about you. Ghost mush."

Kari laughed a little. "Neko does that, too. You should have heard him when we visited Cayde. He wanted to hug me so badly."

Jayesh didn't voice the observation that Kari's ghost had been in love with her for years. "Come on, ghosts, we're trying to have adult time, here."

"No, you're not," Phoenix said in his head. "You're sitting here worrying."

Kari's arms tightened around Jayesh. "Maybe that's what you need."

He kissed her and pulled her closer. "Maybe so."

* * *

 

Nell peered out the window of the space ship, straining against her harness. A vague mist against the stars had spread into a vast, dust-filled field of asteroids and the remains of ancient space ships. In some places, the ships and stone had been so jumbled together that they resembled a jagged, deadly coral reef.

But then, there was a reason for the name.

"That's where most of Earth's population died," Kari said, working the ship's controls. "The ones who survived were caught in the blast as Light and Darkness collided, and they became the Awoken."

"That's why they're blue?" Nell exclaimed. "That's so weird! If I get all lit up and hit Darkness, will I turn blue, too?"

Kari laughed. "No, it's not the same. It was a huge accident and unlikely to ever happen again."

Another ship flew in position just aft of their starboard wing - a beat-up, junker of a ship that belonged to Jayesh.

"Why does he fly that thing?" Nell asked. "You two are married, right? What, do you keep all the money?"

"No," Kari snapped, color rising in her cheeks. "He won't let me buy him a new ship."

"Why?" Nell asked, sorry for making Kari angry all of a sudden.

"Because Jayesh is ... proud." Kari concentrated on making a long, gradual turn to the left. More asteroids crept into view. "He's saving up for a new ship with his bounty earnings. He almost has enough."

Nell opened her mouth to ask why Kari didn't help him, then changed her mind. Obviously, their relationship was complicated. She returned to staring at the scenery.

After a while, Kari steered straight into the ships and asteroids, making for a tiny, shadowed gap about the size of Nell's thumb. But as they drew closer, it expanded into chasm hundreds of miles wide. Beyond it was another collection of ships and asteroids, fused together into giant concentric rings. These were surrounded by blue mist and white clouds.

"That looks like atmosphere," Nell said.

"It is," Kari replied. "Don't ask me how the Awoken managed it, but they somehow terraformed the Reef into semi-inhabitability."

"But ..." Nell struggled to understand this. "Doesn't atmosphere require certain amounts of gravity? And rotation? And magnetic fields?"

"All of which can be simulated," Kari replied. "Like I said, don't ask. I have no idea how they do it. Mind you, it's a poor, thin atmosphere on the outer reaches. You can only hope to breathe at the lower elevations."

Nell touched the clamps that attached her helmet to her suit, making sure they were airtight. She carried four hours worth of oxygen in a slim tank under her cloak, but now she worried if it would be enough.

"What happens if we run out of air?" Nell asked.

"Have your ghost transmat you another tank from the ship," Kari replied. "My cargo compartment has nothing but food, water, and oxygen. I've been out here before."

This soothed Nell a little. She mentally reached for her ghost Hadrian, reassuring herself that he was there. His spark touched hers, close by and nervous.

As they descended through the clouds and atmosphere of the oblong land mass, the ship shuddered and bucked as the winds hit it. Nell clung to her harness. Kari gripped the flight stick, concentrating on her instruments.

Something cold brushed Nell's consciousness, like a slimy, chilled slug creeping across her fingers. She jumped and flinched. At the same time, Hadrian phased into sight in front of her, spinning in a circle, looking for enemies. Kari's ghost, Neko, did the same.

"It's outside," Neko said.

"Get back in phase, you two," Kari snapped. As the ghosts vanished, she added, "I don't know what that was, but we don't need it targeting our ghosts."

Nell craned her neck to peer out the windows, but all she could see was racing clouds. "Hadrian," she thought, "was that an alien?"

"It was Darkness," Hadrian replied with a shudder she could feel.

Nell blinked in confusion. "People keep talking about light and darkness. I just thought people hated night time."

"Darkness!" Hadrian exclaimed. "With a capital D! It's an evil force that consumes and destroys. We have Light from the Traveler, and the Darkness hates us."

"Oh," thought Nell in sudden comprehension. "And Light gives us our powers, right? And lets ghosts heal and resurrect and stuff?"

"Correct," Hadrian replied. "Problem is, the Darkness is very active in this place, and it made note of our arrival. Keep your weapons close to hand."

The clouds vanished and the turbulence subsided. A broad, rocky plain spread beneath them, riddled with cracks, studded with mountains in the distance.

"Last stop, Tangled Shore," Kari said, throttling back and circling. Jayesh's ship was still with them, accompanying them down to the ground.

"More ships," Nell said, peering out. The moth-shaped outlines of various Guardian ships sprinkled the landscape, some docked in groups, others alone, in the shelter of a crater or rock outcropping.

"We're not the first Guardians out here," Kari said. "And probably not the last."

She set them down a safe distance from the other ships. Jayesh's ship landed a short distance away.

Over the radio frequency shared by their ghosts, Jayesh said, "Don't disembark yet."

"What's wrong?" Kari asked.

"A consciousness noticed us," Jayesh said, as if this happened every day. "Keep your engines going. We may need to lift off in a hurry."

Nell and Kari sat in the ship, tense, engines idling. Nothing happened. A whirlwind spun by the ship's nose, tossing dust in the air.

Something moved at the crest of the nearest hill. Before Nell could identify it, energy bolts flashed from the nose of Jayesh's ship, blasting it to cinders.

"That was a scout," Kari said. "Some kind of Fallen on a pike."

"Right," Jayesh said. "It's clear to disembark. Eyes up, Guardians."

"How does he know?" Nell asked, unbuckling her harness.

Kari smiled behind her helmet's faceplate. "He ... senses things. You'll see."

Mystified, Nell climbed out of the cockpit and dropped to the dusty ground outside. Cold wind whipped her cloak against her legs, and the sun seemed faint and distant.

"Hadrian, hand cannon."

Her ghost transmatted the weapon into her hands. Nell loaded it from her ammo belt.

Nearby, Jayesh emerged from his own ship, a pulse rifle under one arm. He climbed the hill and surveyed the remains of the alien he had killed. Nell and Kari joined him.

The pike had been reduced to charred parts spread in a half-circle around the point of impact. The Fallen had been torn in half by the explosion. Nell gagged and had to face the other way, or risk throwing up in her helmet.

Jayesh and Kari examined the body. "What is this insignia?" Jayesh asked. "I thought I knew the major House signs."

"I've never seen it before," Kari replied. "And look at the coloring of the skin. It looks ill."

"And the armor! Just bits of metal patched together with chain."

Hadrian said in Nell's head, "I know Fallen. Take us closer."

"I can't look, Hadrian," Nell thought, swallowing hard.

"You don't have to look," Hadrian replied with a note of urgency. "Just move closer."

Nell did, keeping her gaze on her boots. After a long moment, Hadrian said over their team radio frequency, "This Fallen reeks of a bad batch of ether."

"A bad batch?" Kari said, looking at Nell, since she couldn't see the ghost. "What, they loaded it with recreational drugs?"

"No, nothing like that," Hadrian replied. "That's called Spiced Ether and only the Archons are allowed to have it."

Jayesh tried, unsuccessfully, to smother a laugh. Kari smacked the back of his helmet.

Hadrian ignored them. "This ether has been altered in some other way. The formulation is wrong. Maybe they've been trying to breed super weapons. If we meet more of these Fallen, treat them with extreme caution."

"Thanks for the warning," Kari replied. "Let's go. Instruments detected a settlement in that direction." She pointed toward the distant mountains.

As the three Guardians set out across the barren landscape, Jayesh asked, "Nell, how does your ghost know all that?"

Hadrian whispered in her mind, "Don't tell them I'm part Servitor. Please."

Nell drew a slow breath to give herself time to think. "Well, when he was looking for me, he spent a lot of time observing Fallen in the EDZ."

"Ah." This seemed to satisfy Jayesh.


	3. Spider

They hiked in silence for a while, watching their helmet displays for any sign of hostiles. They had landed in a flat, dusty plain with unexpected gaps in it. Every so often, they came upon a huge fissure with support cables lashed across it, holding the asteroids together. Metal creaked and groaned like a wounded animal. The wind lashed them constantly, the cold reaching through their armor and thermal suits to steal away warmth from their blood. Clouds raced across the sky, only a few hundred feet overhead.

They arrived at the beginning of the mountains, which turned out to be another asteroid lashed on at an angle. They picked their way through a gap like a huge crack in the stone, where the rock shifted dangerously on either side. Then they emerged in another open valley, recessed deeper into the asteroid. It was slightly warmer, and the wind blew in random gusts instead of being constant.

A hundred feet below them, in the valley, were the ruins of a little town. The houses were dome-shaped with round doors and windows, long since pillaged and left open to the elements. In the middle of it was a circle of crude metal plates, and more of the strange Fallen clustered around it.

Jayesh and Kari immediately darted sideways to hide behind a boulder. Nell followed them.

Kari studied the aliens through her scout rifle's scope. "Big gang of those bad ether Fallen. About fifty. I see dregs, vandals ... and these creepy crawling ones with blue warts on their backs. What the hell."

Jayesh and Nell looked, too.

"Why are those vandals carrying lanterns?" Nell asked. "It's daytime."

There was a short silence. Jayesh's ghost said slowly, "Uh, you guys ... we don't know how to fight these things. Let's just sneak, instead."

"I second that," Nell's ghost replied.

Kari's ghost said, "I wonder how these new Fallen react to lightning, wearing all that metal?"

Nell and Jayesh stared at Kari.

She grinned at them through her helmet. "Come on, guys. I could take them out in one shot. You stay here and cover me."

"But we know nothing about them!" Jayesh protested. "We don't even know if they're our enemies. I don't want to ride into town and butcher the locals."

"Fine, mister peace and Light," Kari retorted. "Walk down and say hi. If they're unfriendly, we'll resurrect you afterward."

"They reek of Darkness," Jayesh said sulkily. "I'm not going near them."

"I can!" Nell said suddenly. "I'm not afraid of dying and being resurrected. And Hadrian can learn more about them."

"Nell, I'm not sure that's wise-"

Nell slung her rifle across her back, stepped out of hiding and walked down the hill toward the aliens, waving one arm.

One alien elbowed its nearest companion and pointed. As one, the crowd of Fallen turned to stare at the lone Guardian approaching them.

Hadrian scanned as they walked. "Definitely changed by the bad ether. I don't think they qualify as the same kind of Fallen anymore. The crawling ones have ether warts on their backs. They might explode, actually."

"Fun," Nell said through her teeth. "Can you talk to them?"

Hadrian said nothing for several steps. Then he murmured, very quietly, "Please never ask me that again."

Nell's heart suddenly hurt. "I'm sorry, Hadrian. I forgot."

"No offense taken," he replied, a little more cheerfully. "They're preparing to attack us."

The aliens were drawing weapons, swinging lanterns, snarling to each other. The crawling ones scuttled back and forth. Since Fallen had six limbs, they looked uncommonly like giant spiders.

"Hey there!" Nell shouted. "Are you guys friendly? Like, to Guardians?"

The answer was so obviously _no_ that her friends and their ghosts all stifled laughter over the radio.

The aliens raised their weapons and fired enough arc bolts to blot out the sun. The crawling ones charged, galloping over the rocks.

Nell had expected this and had an escape route planned. Summoning a grenade made of Light, she lobbed it at the crawling ones and dashed sideways into one of the ruined dome-houses.

The explosion of the grenade, plus the explosion of the crowd of crawling aliens, created a concussion that blasted Nell through the door of the nearest dome and out the opposite door. She hit the ground and rolled, the squealing and hissing of the aliens filling her ears. Head spinning, she whipped to all fours and leaped to her feet, reaching for her rifle.

A single surviving crawling alien leaped off the domed roof with a screech. Nell glimpsed it for an instant, the six limbs spread-eagled against the turbulent sky. The warts on its back burst open in a blinding flash of igniting ether.

* * *

Trees. Nell stood in a forest of them. Graceful, sweeping trees with white trunks and delicate foliage like snowflakes. Red flowers bloomed in rows beneath them.

"Where is this?" Nell wondered aloud. Entranced, she touched one of the white trunks. It was warm. Light swirled through the bark. As her fingers encountered the tree, the Light grew brighter, curling around her fingers.

"Star trees," Nell murmured, although she had no idea why she said it. The forest seemed to surround her with secrets, yet she was on the inside. They were her secrets, too. The trees arched above her, including her, protecting her with their shade.

One of the trees was hers, she was certain. Her tree. Her star. All she had to do was walk through the glowing forest until she found it. She gazed around, wondering what direction it might be-

* * *

Resurrection Light filled her. The dream faded, and she opened her eyes, a distant pain fading from her head. Hadrian floated above her, his black core silhouetted against his own Light as he restored her.

Jayesh was there, too, offering her a hand. "Well, now we know to stay away from the crawling Fallen."

Nell accepted his hand and climbed to her feet. She looked around in vain for the trees. The desire to find her tree still burned within her - but somehow, she couldn't get there from here. She forced her mind back to the matter at hand.

"The exploding ones killed me!" Nell exclaimed. "I vote we call them screebs. That's the sound they make."

"Screebs," Jayesh said. "It's as good as any other word, I suppose."

Kari was a short distance away, picking through the scorched bodies of the aliens. It appeared that she had used her Stormcaller lightning on them, after all. Their metal armor had conducted electricity exactly as she had expected.

"We mopped up after you went down," Jayesh explained. "Although the grenade into the screebs was a great idea. Took out half the mob by yourself."

Nell grinned. "Being a Guardian is kind of fun."

Kari stood up, pulling a submachine gun from the hands of a dead alien. "Look at this," she said, carrying it to them. "Most of these creeps have garbage weapons, all cobbled together. But this is high quality work, here. Anybody recognize this symbol?" She pointed to an engraving on the gun's stock. It resembled the painted circles and lines Fallen used to create their House marks. But this was arranged into the definite shape of a spider.

"More screeb stuff?" Nell suggested.

"No," Kari said. "Those are Fallen, not spiders, no matter how much they look like them. This is ... basically House of the Spider."

"Great," Jayesh muttered. "Yet another gross Fallen house to deal with." He shivered and rubbed his arms, looking over his shoulders, even though the valley was devoid of life.

Kari said, "I vote we head up the valley, that way. There's more settlements up there, and we might find some Awoken."

"Awoken actually live around here?" Nell asked as they set out again.

"This is their homeland," Kari said. "I think their living areas are way nicer than this, though. And deeper down. Where the atmosphere is better."

They walked along the valley floor for an hour, keeping alert for enemies. Their ghosts detected groups of hostiles in the hills, but nothing attacked them.

The sun slid lower in the sky as the jumble of asteroids rotated. The sky changed from indigo to black, studded with stars and the million tiny moons of other asteroids. The fireteam stopped to switch out air tanks, then continued on.

Suddenly Jayesh's ghost said, "We're being hailed on a private frequency. Open the channel?"

"Is it a Guardian, Phoenix?" Jayesh asked.

"No," Phoenix said slowly. "Local frequency, though. Maybe an Awoken?"

"Patch it through," Jayesh said. "So we can all hear."

A gravelly, wheezy voice spoke over their radios. "What have we here? More Guardians?"

"Yes sir," Jayesh replied. "Are you friend or foe?"

The stranger laughed - a guttural, wet laugh. "Friend ... for now. If we can reach a mutually beneficial agreement. I assume you're looking for the killers of Cayde-6?"

Jayesh, Kari, and Nell glanced at each other.

"Yes," Jayesh replied.

"Good!" the stranger exclaimed. "You're hunting Uldren Sov and his Barons. I know where they are, and I want them gone. Fair exchange. I give you information. You help me reestablish business. Eh? What do you say?"

Kari broke in. "I say we need to know who we're talking to before we agree to anything."

The stranger laughed again. "You brought a shrewd woman along, did you? Never met a woman I could out-bargain. Very well. I'm transmitting coordinates. My guards will meet you. Please don't kill them. They look like, how you say, porcupines."

Their ghosts obediently displayed nav points to the coordinates, but neither ghosts nor Guardians were happy about it.

"Who is this guy?" Kari hissed over their own frequency. "Some kind of crime lord?"

"All that talk about business makes me wonder," Jayesh replied.

Nell said, "He didn't sound human to me. Can aliens speak English?"

"Yes," Kari said slowly. "Sometimes. But ... I thought the Awoken ..."

She trailed off and nobody said anything else.

They followed their nav points through another ruined town. Among a tangle of rocks and spliced ship parts, they found a cave entrance marked with that same spider symbol they'd found on the weapon. They ventured inside, Kari taking point, Jayesh watching the rear.

Two Fallen leaped out of the shadows and barred their way with electrified spears. Their armor was covered in long metal blades, giving them a porcupine look. Kari whipped out her rifle.

"Don't shoot!" Nell cried, pushing Kari's rifle toward the floor. "Porcupines, remember?"

The three Guardians faced the two guards in silence and holstered their weapons. Slowly the guards lifted their spears aside. One of them beckoned, then turned and walked deeper into the cave. They followed, and the second guard fell in behind them.

"Because that's not ominous or anything," Jayesh muttered.

The prickly guards led them down a winding passage filled with cargo containers and ether tanks. Deep within the mountain, they reached a small cavern lit by tiny lights along the walls, leaving most of it in gloom. The brightest light was behind a huge throne made of salvaged metal and ship parts. Seated on this throne was an immense Fallen.

He was grossly fat, two of his four hands resting on his rounded belly. One of his other hands fiddled with some object they didn't immediately make out, while the other waved them closer. Four glowing blue eyes blinked at them.

"Well well," he said in that same gravelly voice. "A whole fireteam. The others came alone. Maybe you'll have better luck than they had."

"Who are you?" Kari demanded.

"You may call me Spider," the alien said, gesturing to himself. "Warlocks, eh? And a hunter? Out to avenge your Vanguard?"

"How do you know so much?" Jayesh said.

Spider shifted in his seat, fixing his attention on him. "Ah, the male. So hard to tell in all the gear. To answer your question, I know what's in my best interests to know. And Uldren and his Scorn are nobody's best interests. Yours or mine."

"We know of Uldren," Jayesh said. "What are the Scorn?"

Here Nell was distracted by her ghost whimpering in her mind. "Nell ... Nell, he's playing with a ghost."

Nell squinted through the near darkness. Sure enough, clutched in Spider's third hand was a dead ghost. His fingers spun the two halves of the shell as if working a puzzle. As Nell noticed this, she also noticed three mesh bags hanging from the ceiling around the throne. Each was stuffed with more dead ghosts.

Hadrian began to cry, very softly, in sheer terror. He had been a victim of the Fallen who had reworked his core into running on Servitor parts. He had been rendered mute until the Tower Guardians repaired him.

Nell stood perfectly still, but rage began to burn inside her.

"Scorn are Fallen Fallen," Spider said, and laughed wheezily at his own joke. "Fikrul helped Sov escape prison, eh? Uldren has dark power. Gave it to Fikrul. Fikrul raises the dead Fallen as Scorn. What they call a necromancer, eh? Wizard of the dead?"

"Their ether is messed up," Kari pointed out. "We killed some Scorn on the way in."

"Good," Spider said, pressing two sets of fingertips together. "Already acting like Guardians. Yes, Scorn feed on corrupt ether. Find it, destroy it. Starve them. Too much Darkness in the Reef as it is. But you bring the Light, eh?" He leaned forward, his multiple hands passing the dead ghost shell between them. "If you find ghost parts, I'll trade you for them. Valuable things."

"You ..." Jayesh hardly seemed able to force the words out. "You collect dead ghosts?"

"Just a little hobby of mine," Spider said, tossing the ghost in the air with one hand and catching it with another. "Guardians have live ghosts. Spider has dead ones. Some shells are very pretty. Guardian came in here, had shell made of gold wire. I'd trade him queensfoil for that, but he refused."

"Madrid," Kari whispered. "Have you seen Madrid? Awoken Hunter?"

"He was here two cycles ago," Spider replied. "Angry Guardian. Not polite. Claimed the bounty on Yaviks, though. One less Baron for you to hunt." He pointed at a corner of the room, where a battered Fallen helmet hung on a peg. It was splattered with dried blood.

"So," Spider said. "I'm waiting for someone to bring back Pirrha's helmet. Rifleman. Killed Cayde's ghost. Death sentence for a Guardian, eh? I give coordinates, you bring helmet, I pay you lots of glimmer."

By this time, Kari and Jayesh's ghosts were seething. They sensed Hadrian's panic, and fed that anger into their Guardians.

Kari whispered to Jayesh, "I can't negotiate like this."

"I can," Jayesh whispered back. He faced Spider. "Give us the bounty in writing, and we'll fulfill it."

Spider laughed, slapping the arm of his throne. "Not just shrewd women! Writing. You're the first Guardian to ask for that. Wait just a moment." Spider dug into the various crates and boxes heaped around his throne, produced a pen and paper, and scribbled the conditions of their agreement.

Jayesh read it carefully and nodded. "We'll kill Pirrha and bring back his helmet. Clear enough. You'll honor this, right?"

"I always honor my deals," Spider replied. "Anything less is bad for business."


	4. The Rifleman

The three Guardians left Spider's cave in a hurry. As soon as they were outdoors, their ghosts broke into tirades.

"That Spider is sick!"

"Collecting dead ghosts? Does he collect dead Guardians, too?"

"I refuse to work with him!"

"He'll stab us all in the back, wait and see!"

"Ghosts are _people_ and he collects _dead people!"_  


Meanwhile, Hadrian simply cried.

Jayesh scanned the cliff wall. "Uh, I think we need to find shelter where we can talk about this."

"That way," Kari said, pointing at the ruined town. "Neko detected an underground complex on the way in. All empty, probably because of Spider's guards."

Nell said nothing, because if she opened her mouth, she was going to cuss. A lot.

Kari led them into one of the empty domed buildings, and down a sagging flight of stairs into a dark cavern filled with scattered pike parts. They found a smaller room off the big cavern and barricaded themselves inside with a sheet of metal. There, they sat down and summoned their ghosts.

Nell immediately wrapped Hadrian in a hug. He burrowed against her, still making a pathetic whimpering. She shushed him and rocked him like a child.

Neko burst into being with a small explosion of Light. "Kari, that Spider will hand you over to his guards, butcher you, and take me as a souvenir. Didn't you see the look on his face when he mentioned live ghosts? He wants one. Or two. Or three."

Kari pulled him close to her helmet. "Don't be so scared, little light," she whispered. "We're tougher than that. And smarter." She gently lifted him out of the air in both hands and tucked him under her chin.

Phoenix appeared over Jayesh's palm, his eye blazing orange. "Jay, that Spider collects our corpses. How can you offer to work for him?"

"Because this isn't about us," Jayesh said. "It's about Cayde."

All three ghosts fell silent.

Jayesh gazed around at his companions and their shivering ghosts. "The Darkness was thick on the Scorn we fought. But I didn't sense that from Spider. He's certainly no servant of the Light, but neither does he serve the Darkness. He's all about business and negotiation. As long as we let him think he has the upper hand, he'll give us the information we need to hunt down Cayde's killers. He already gave us intel on the sicko who shot Cayde's ghost. I say we do what we came here to do."

"I thought you were against the whole revenge thing," Kari said.

Jayesh sighed and gazed at his ghost. "I'm not happy with it. But now that we're here, I think something bigger is afoot than Cayde being murdered. He was the first. But he won't be the last. I think our entire solar system is at risk from whatever is incubating here."

There was a short silence. Jayesh stroked Phoenix, and Phoenix's eye slowly faded back to blue. Neko and Hadrian recovered and floated into the air beside their Guardians.

"I can't take Hadrian around Spider," Nell said. "He can't handle it."

"What's wrong with him?" Kari asked.

Nell looked at her ghost. Hadrian shivered in midair. "The Fallen tore me apart and rebuilt me. Over and over. For years. And seeing a Fallen who - who collects ghosts like me-" Hadrian stammered to a halt and darted back into Nell's arms.

Kari and Jayesh stared at Nell.

"How is he still alive?" Jayesh asked.

"I don't know," Nell replied. "And if either of you makes fun of him, I'll kill you." She said this as if murdering teammates was an every day occurrence.

"Nell, we all feel that way about our ghosts," Kari replied. "Ask Jayesh about the time I punched him because of our ghosts fighting each other."

"Or don't," Jayesh muttered.

"Point is," Kari went on, "we're going to be fighting Fallen and Scorn out here. Can your ghost handle it?"

Hadrian peeked out of Nell's arms. "I can handle fighting them. Just not ... talking."

Neko and Phoenix flew to their brother ghost, compassion radiating from them. "You poor thing," Phoenix whispered. Both of them opened their cores, as if preparing to resurrect their Guardians, and poured Light into Hadrian.

For a second, Hadrian glowed blue, his eye flashing pure white. Then the Light faded.

Hadrian floated into the air, twirling the segments of his shell. "Thank you," he told them. "I didn't know ..."

All three ghosts flew together in midair and interlaced their shells, like a group hug. "Any time," Neko told him. "If the fear hits you again, we'll heal your spark. As often as you need."

The ghosts returned to their Guardians. Nell sensed immediately that Hadrian was calmer. He took his usual spot over her left shoulder, and his crying and shivering had ceased.

"Thank you both," Jayesh told the ghosts. "This is a dark place with no social trappings to keep us human. We have only what Light we've brought with us." He gazed at Phoenix, silently consulting him. "There's enough atmosphere for us to take off our helmets for a while. Why don't we eat before we go bounty hunting?"

None of them had touched food in hours, and Nell realized she was ravenous. Their ghosts transmatted ration packs from their ships. The three pulled off their helmets, inhaled the thin, cold air, and hurriedly ate. By the time Nell finished, the lack of oxygen was making her dizzy. She sealed her helmet and turned her oxygen back on, breathing deeply until the dizziness faded.

Jayesh replaced his helmet and rose to his feet. "Let's do this, team. Ghosts, stay phased. We're hunting a ghost killer, and I can't face the thought of losing any of you."

"Yeah," Nell muttered, "because Spider would recover the parts."

Nobody spoke, but their ghosts shuddered.

* * *

 

"Madrid?" Rose said hesitantly.

Her Guardian hadn't spoken in hours. He lay on a ledge twenty feet from the floor of a huge cavern, a sniper rifle propped on a tripod before him. He gazed through the scope at the movements of the Scorn below, waiting for Pirrha, the Rifleman, to show his ugly face.

"Madrid, love," Rose ventured again, speaking to his mind from her position in phase. "I'm not picking up Pirrha anywhere in this cave system. He may have moved on."

"No." Madrid's thought was as cold and unfeeling as a stone wall. "He's still here."

Rose fell silent again, swallowing her silent dread. When Cayde had died, practically in Madrid's arms, Madrid's entire soul had screamed. Rose had screamed. The agony of guilt and grief had simply been too great.

But the aftermath of that scream had been cold and quiet. Madrid swore revenge, and as he did, he laid part of himself aside - the warm, loving side that laughed at their little jokes together. He stopped talking to Rose except for the barest necessary communication. His Light had gone cold. Rose had once carried cold Light, and well remembered the bitterness of it. But now her Guardian had crossed the line within himself - the divide between Light and Darkness that lay so close to the surface in all Awoken.

Madrid had embraced his dark side in order to hunt. And he had shut Rose out. She could feel his spark, but she couldn't touch it as before. If she had to resurrect him, it might take a long time to make enough contact to pull it off. So she waited, hoping that once his vengeance was accomplished, Madrid would come back to himself.

On the cavern floor below, the Scorn stirred, their movements becoming quick and agitated. Many of them rushed up a tunnel toward the cave system's upper levels. Others grabbed weapons and strapped on armor. Madrid lifted himself on his elbows, peering through the scope.

Rose scanned, picking up many moving targets. But three of those targets carried ghost ID tags.

"Guardians," she told Madrid. "And two of them are Kari and Jayesh."

A grim chuckle escaped Madrid for the first time in days. "What's my fireteam doing out here?"

"Looks like they're hunting Pirrha, same as you."

"Well then." Madrid shifted positions a little, adjusting his grip on the rifle. "Let's see if they flush him from hiding."

Rose was so desperately lonely, and so glad to see her friends, that she tapped into the private Light-powered network shared by all ghosts. At once the voices of Neko and Phoenix came through, as well as another ghost called Hadrian.

"Watch the sniper on the bridge!"

"Healing Kari, hold on."

"Look out, enemies on your six."

"I thought Fallen were ugly, but these Scorn are uglier."

"Pop that ether tank against the back wall."

The resulting explosion vibrated the ledge Madrid lay on. The body of a Scorn flew out of the passage and flopped dead on the cavern floor.

Madrid chuckled again - a hard, cynical chuckle Rose didn't like.

"Hello, boys," Rose said to her brother ghosts. "Madrid and I are in sniping position in the next room."

"Rose!" Neko and Phoenix exclaimed. They chattered excitedly to their Guardians, passing this news on.

Jayesh spoke over the radio link. "Rose, patch us through to Madrid."

"I hear you, kid," Madrid said quietly, so his voice wouldn't carry.

"Great to hear from you again!" Jayesh said. "We're after the Rifleman, but we're not detecting him anywhere. Any intel?"

"Haven't seen him since dawn," Madrid replied. "But he hasn't left. I'll clear the next room for you."

With quick, deadly efficiency, Madrid put a bullet through the skull of every Scorn in the room. They died trying to figure out the source of the shots.

A new voice spoke on the Guardians' frequency - a sneering, laughing voice. "Oh look, more Guardians. Coming to avenge Cayde-6, are you?"

The third Guardian on the fireteam, a woman Madrid didn't recognize, replied, "We're going to kill you, bastard."

Pirrha only laughed.

As the fireteam entered the cavern, glowing holograms of the Scorn Baron appeared throughout the room. All of them carried a deadly mechanical crossbow. All of them wore the scaly skin of a Cabal war beast on his head and shoulders, the beast's metal mask covering his face.

Rose said to her companion ghosts, "Pirrha is blind. He's had his vision wired to the sights on his crossbow, meaning he can hit anything he sees. Warn your Guardians."

Madrid swung his rifle from hologram to hologram, trying to spot the real Pirrha. The fireteam on the cavern floor fanned out, taking cover behind stacks of crates or stone pillars. The holograms fired real bullets, and the Guardians fired back. Each hologram vanished in one hit, only to reappear elsewhere.

"What weird tech is this?" Jayesh exclaimed.

"Lightweight holographs," Pirrha replied. "Just as deadly as me. Come on, Guardians, bring out your ghosts. I dare you."

"I'll see you in hell," Kari snarled. She threw a grenade at a cluster of holograms, wiping all of them out. The blast shook the room.

Pirrha laughed again. "I'll kill you, instead. Might keep your ghost. Sell its shell to Spider."

Silent rage filled every ghost and Guardian in the room. Madrid swung his rifle to the right. The real Pirrha kept to the back of the room, where a series of flowstone pillars created the best cover. He flitted in and out of sight, only the muzzle of his crossbow appearing from hiding as he watched the fight with it.

Madrid waited in patient hate.

"Pirrha," Jayesh said, "we're here to make sure justice is done. You committed murder, and your life is forfeit."

"That depends on who wins this match," Pirrha replied. "It might be your life that is forfeit."

One of his holograms appeared behind Jayesh and shot him through the head.

Kari and Nell screamed and destroyed the hologram before Jayesh's body hit the floor.

"Come out, come out, little ghost," Pirrha chanted. "Your Guardian is down. You know you want to resurrect him. It'll only take a second. One short little second."

Phoenix's voice spoke over the radio. "Kill him. Kill him where it hurts."

Madrid sat as still as the stone beneath him, gazing through his scope, two fingers curled around the trigger.

Pirrha dashed to another spot, putting himself out of Madrid's line of sight. "Eventually you'll all be down. And your ghosts will take a chance on resurrecting you. And I'll take their remains as trophies, the way I did Cayde's ghost."

None of them answered this, but their rage burned hotter.

Kari risked darting from behind a pillar to the crate where Jayesh had been sheltering, where she dragged him further under cover. A smear of blood trailed after him.

"I'll kill Pirrha," she breathed. "I'll kill them all, and then Uldren." Then she broke cover and charged Pirrha's hiding place, lightning crackling from her fists.

Pirrha shot her, but missed a killing blow. Kari stumbled, then leaped into the air and flew, her Stormcaller power lifting her off the ground.

Madrid's face tightened in a snarling grin.

Pirrha stood his ground as the Light-empowered Guardian bore down upon him, head bowed, arm raised, the crossbow focused on Kari. Just as her first lightning bolt licked across his weapon, he fired.

Kari fell out of the air and crashed to the floor, her lightning dying at once. Pirrha had placed a perfect shot through her forehead.

Neko cried, "Kari!"

"Stay phased, Neko," Rose told him. "Don't risk it."

Neko's only reply was an incoherent sound of fury.

Pirrha laughed and danced in place. "Two dead Guardians! Only one left! Come out, little female. It won't hurt long. Not like Cayde. He suffered when his ghost died. But not you. You'll already be dead."

Nell ducked out of hiding to fire at him, cursing, then hid again.

Pirrha raised a hand and summoned eight duplicates. They surrounded Nell and slowly closed in on her, crossbows drawn. Pirrha walked with them, keeping a crate between himself and Nell. He and his doubles grinned, showing needle-sharp teeth, anticipating the kill.

Madrid tracked him with his sniper rifle, cold, calm, professional. He squeezed the trigger with calculated deliberation.

Pirrha's head disappeared in a fountain of black ether.

The holograms vanished as their master's will expired.

The crack of the sniper rifle echoed and echoed around the room. The only other sound was the clang and thud as Pirrha's body hit the stone floor.

Rose felt Madrid's iron concentration relax at last. He climbed to his feet, rolling his shoulders and rotating his neck. "All clear," he called down. "Get those Guardians back up. Hey, what's your name?"

Nell peered out of hiding. "Nell. Oh, you're the hunter who helped me out in the wilds!"

"Didn't recognize you with the helmet on," Madrid said. He pointed at the alien's corpse. "Take his war beast pelt. Spider wants proof of the kill."

As he lifted his sniper rifle and collapsed the supports, Rose whispered, "Are you all right?"

"No," he thought. "But that's not on you, love."

This didn't make Rose feel any better.

Down on the floor, Phoenix and Neko poured resurrection light into their dead Guardians. Jayesh and Kari stirred and sat up, looking around in bewilderment as their ghosts mended their helmets.

"Did we get him?" Kari called.

"Madrid got him," Nell replied, struggling to free the war beast skin from the numerous metal bands that lashed it to Pirrha's body.

Kari drew her sidearm, walked to the corpse, and shot each band free. Then she shot Pirrha in the heart. "That was for Cayde's ghost." She shot him again. "And that was for Jayesh."

Nell finished freeing the skin and rolled it up, her eyes wide behind her face plate.

Madrid leaped down from his perch, cushioning his landing with a burst of Light. He walked up and greeted Kari with a handshake. Jayesh was still sitting on the floor, staring at Kari, so Madrid helped him to his feet and shook his hand, too. Then he greeted Nell. "Full-fledged Guardian now, huh?"

"Took a while, but I passed training." Nell kicked Pirrha's body. "What do we do with this? Burn it?"

"It'd be appropriate," Madrid said. "But I want the Scorn to see what Guardians can do. Put some fear into them, if they can feel it."

Kari glared at their dead foe. "Should we frisk him? Find Cayde's ghost?"

"No," Madrid said.

Kari turned on him, fists clenched. "Why not? He said he took her pieces as a trophy."

Madrid dug into one of the ammo pockets on his belt. "Because I have her pieces." He held out a handful of metal shards.

The three Guardians and their ghosts stared at the pathetic, shattered remains of what had once been a sentient being. Some bits of shell still bore the brilliant red paint job that Cayde had given her. Each ghost and Guardian shared a pang of fresh grief.

"She's going back to the Tower," Madrid said. "Where she can be buried with her Guardian."

Kari pressed a hand to her mouth and bumped her helmet. "That's so ... good of you, Madrid. That you'd think of that."

He returned the pieces to his pouch. "Let's get back to Spider. With any luck, the other Guardians have taken down some of the other worthless Barons."

Madrid led the way out of the cave. Kari and Nell came next. Last of all was Jayesh, watching for attack, and uncharacteristically silent.


	5. Visions of Light

Spider paid them all a portion of the promised bounty, and seemed to begrudge Jayesh for having the agreed-upon amount in writing.

"You come back next cycle, I'll have more information on the next Baron, eh? Multiple fire teams chasing them. Barons moving around. I'll know more at sunrise."

The four Guardians left Spider's lair in the near pitch-blackness of the Tangled Shore's night cycle. The temperature dropped below zero, and the wind slashed at them.

"No point staying out in this," Madrid said. "Nobody moves outdoors during night cycle on these rocks. I camp in my ship until morning. How about you?"

"Sounds good to me," Kari said. "Do you recommend sparrows?"

"Sure, if you want the windchill to freeze you to the seat," Madrid replied. "It's only a kilometer to where everyone docked. Have your ghost transmat you." As an example, he summoned Rose, who swept him from head to foot with a blue particle beam. Madrid vanished in a flash of light, and a second later, Rose did, too.

"You can do that?" Nell exclaimed.

"Sure," Kari said.  


Their ghosts transmatted them back to their ships in multiple flashes of Light. They reappeared in the wind outside their spacecraft, where it was even colder.

"My ship has bunks and a galley," Kari called over the howling wind. "Let's go in."

"Not me," said Madrid, who had docked somewhere else and was out of sight. "My ship has something yours doesn't. Privacy."

Kari snorted at him and climbed the ladder, her ghost unlocking the airlock door along the way. Nell and Jayesh followed.

The galley was the size of a closet, but it had benches to sit on while they ate. None of them said much until Nell broke the silence. "I'm glad we killed that alien. He learned our language just to mock us."

"I'm glad justice was done," Jayesh said. "After the fashion of his kind, anyway."

Nell looked at him in the dim lighting. Jayesh's eyes had shadows beneath them. He sat with his head hanging, his hair still matted with dried blood on one side.

"You didn't want him dead?" Nell asked.

Jayesh smiled a little. "Of course I did. Especially when he started taunting us. I didn't even know I died until Phoenix resurrected me. Not a bad death, I suppose."

"Me too," Kari agreed. "Shot me right out of my super. Jerk move."

"It was kind of funny," Jayesh said. "You really shouldn't dream when you're dead. No brain activity and so forth. But I dreamed about trees."

"I did, too!" Nell exclaimed, straightening. "When that screeb killed me. White, glowing trees?"

Jayesh blinked at her. "Yes, exactly. We had the same dream?"

Kari looked at both of them. "I wasn't going to mention it, but ... I did, too. Beautiful trees. I thought they might be made of ice until I touched one."

Jayesh leaned his elbows on his knees. "We all dreamed the same thing while dead. Trees of Light. A vision from the Traveler?"

The girls nodded soberly.

"One tree was mine," Nell added. "I just needed to find it."

"I sensed that, too," Jayesh said. "But ... never mind. The point is, the Traveler is trying to communicate something to us. Something massively important. I just hope we don't have to die over and over to get the message. I'm no thantonaut."

"It's so strange," Kari said. "We're in this dark place, on such dark business. And yet the Traveler hasn't forgotten us."

"I just hope that _we_ don't forget _it_ ," Jayesh said. He slowly rose to his feet, rubbing the spot on his head where the bullet had hit. "I'm going to bed."

The bunks were slightly wider than a single human body. Jayesh only fit once he'd removed his armored robe and boots. As he lay there, gazing into the ordinary, vinyl-scented darkness of the ship, listening to the wind whistle through the fuselage, Kari slipped out of her bunk and crammed herself into Jayesh's.

They wound up side by side, Jayesh smashed against the wall with Kari balanced precariously on the outside edge of the thin mattress. But neither of them minded. He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair, comforted by her presence.

"What else did you see, lovelight?" she whispered. "I know there was more to your vision than that."

"There was." He sighed. "Did you notice the red flowers?"

"Yes. I was afraid to touch them. They looked ... important."

"They're ghosts," Jayesh whispered. "Thousands of them. You can tell which ones are dead, because their petals are transparent."

"How did you find that out?"

"Because I ..." Jayesh's voice cracked and wobbled. "Because I found Sundance."

Kari inhaled. "You did? How did you know?"

"I just knew," Jayesh whispered. "If I found Phoenix, I'd know. I told her how very, very sorry I was." Tears burned his eyes. "I wasn't very dignified."

"Shh," Kari whispered. "It's all right, Jay."

He gulped, fighting back the tears. "She told me that she's at peace now. And the tree beside her was Cayde's. They're at rest together."

He couldn't say anything more for a while, but his body shook with sobs. Kari held him, her own grief threatening to overwhelm her.

A little later, when Jayesh was calmer, he went on. "I completely lost it in that forest. You don't seem to have many inhibitions in that place. I screamed at the Traveler for allowing this to happen. And he sent his avatar. He looked different from what I remember, but ... he's awakened now, I guess. He was all white and gold, like the Vanguard colors."

"Did he tell you to man up?" Kari murmured with a sad laugh.

"He comforted me," Jayesh said. "Then we argued, like we did when I climbed into his shell."

Kari laughed again, burying her face against his neck to stifle the sound. "You seriously sat in the netherworld and argued with a god?"

"We debated the finer points of justice and revenge," Jayesh went on. "Don't laugh. He likes it. All the red flowers listened closely, and the trees leaned over us."

"What'd you decide?"

Jayesh lay there a moment, gazing into his own memory. "We are his weapons. He's wielding us against the Darkness here in the Reef, beginning with the Barons. But we're not to touch Uldren Sov."

"What?" Kari exclaimed. "But he's the one we're after!"

"The Traveler has reserved that particular vengeance for others," Jayesh said. "I didn't understand what he meant. I did ask how many more Guardians would have to die. He went quiet and sad and wouldn't answer."

Kari lay in silence, thinking about that. "Not sure what I think of the Traveler acting sad over a question like that."

"I don't think it bodes well," Jayesh muttered. "Anyway, about that time, Phoenix resurrected me, and I woke up. And the battle was over, and you were shooting a corpse."

"I was so angry," Kari whispered. "You died right in front of me."

"I thought death didn't bother you?"

" _My_ death. I don't like seeing _you_ die. Especially in a room with a monster who shoots ghosts. I had the thought - if he shot Phoenix - you'd never get up again." Kari held him a little tighter. "I know why Guardians don't marry often, now. It's too painful to care this much."

"You died, too, heartspark," Jayesh whispered. "And I wasn't even there to fight for you."

They held each other for a long time. Finally, Jayesh fell asleep, and Kari shifted to her own bunk, where she lay facing him, listening to his breathing until she fell asleep, too.

In phased state, where their ghosts rested, Phoenix said, "Neko, that dream of theirs scares me."

"Me, too," Neko replied. "Ghost flowers? Trees? The Black Garden has those, too."

"Maybe the Traveler has a White Garden?" Phoenix suggested. "Rasputin calls the Traveler the Gardener."

"Unless it's all some insidious vision from the Darkness," Neko said. "And our Guardians are being led astray."

"But," Phoenix faltered, "Jay met the Traveler's avatar. And even argued with him," he added with a laugh.

Neko didn't know what to make of that. Finally he said, "Maybe it's not a lie, then. But still. I hope they don't die any more."

"Me neither," Phoenix agreed fervently.

Hadrian listened in silence, gazing at Nell as she slept. He felt unworthy to join this discussion with his far more educated brothers. Instead, he simply phased into reality, snuggled under Nell's chin, and felt her hand automatically close around his shell. He'd only had his Guardian for seven months, and he was still in the honeymoon phase: simply, passionately in love with her.

But, like his brother ghosts, he feared what awful horrors of death and darkness awaited them in the future.

* * *

 

The next morning, as the Tangled Shore revolved back into the sunlight, the four-Guardian fireteam had an awful shock.

Many Guardian ships were docked in the area, usually in some sheltered location. But that morning, as they were climbing out into the wind and preparing to mount sparrows for the trip back to Spider's hideout, an unfamiliar ghost hailed them.

"Hello!" she called. "Are you a fireteam? Could you help my Guardian, please? Just over this way."

The four followed the ghost's directions to a ship parked some distance off. There they saw a Guardian half-lying on the ground beside a sparrow, with a second Guardian draped across the seat. The one on the ground was tagged Glyn-8.

"Hey," Jayesh called. "Need help?"

The Guardian on the ground rolled to face them, whipping out a sidearm before he realized they were Guardians, too. He was an Exo Titan, and one leg had been torn off at the hip. All that remained were a few bits of wire protruding from under his armor.

"Yeah," he grunted. "My partner, here. Lost his ghost in a fight with a Baron. Lost my leg, too. Gotta get into my ship somehow. Gotta get home." He summoned his ghost and held her up hopelessly. Her shell and eye were cracked. She gazed at the Guardians, wobbling in midair.

The question of why his ghost hadn't transmatted them inside died on Jayesh's tongue. "Phoenix, heal her," he muttered.

It took all four of them to hoist the Exo into his ship. Then they worked just as hard to lift the dead partner, an Awoken Titan in cracked armor, into the ship, too.

As they stood there afterward, catching their breath, Madrid said over the radio, "Glyn-8, who did this to you?"

"The Baron they call the Mad Bomber," Glyn replied. "Spider was handing out bounties at dawn. We thought we could take him." His voice broke. "Zarneth took a grenade to the face. When his ghost tried to resurrect him, another grenade was already on the way."

Madrid's voice was as cold as the wind. "Tell us what you know. This Mad Bomber won't live out the day."

As Glyn told them his observations, the ghosts Phoenix, Neko, Rose, and Hadrian converged on Glyn's ghost and mended her core. They couldn't do much for her shell, but the crack across her eye smoothed over.

"Thank you," she told them. "My Guardian only survived by a narrow margin. Don't emerge from phase if you can help it. Kaniks is insane. You can't predict his attacks."

"Our team killed Pirrha yesterday," Neko told her. "The Baron who shot Cayde's ghost."

Glyn's ghost's eye flashed red for a second. "Good. He didn't deserve to live. Kill Kaniks, too. For my Guardian. And our friend, and his ghost."

They assured her of their Guardians' prowess, and made sure she phased properly. Then each ghost returned to their Guardian, somber and a little afraid.

The fireteam flew into town on their sparrows and checked in with Spider. Again, Jayesh made him write down the details of the bounty.

"All about those contracts, eh?" Spider remarked, handing him the scrap of paper. "You've a real head for business. Know what else is good for business?" He gestured at the far wall. The bloody Fallen helmet had been joined by Pirrha's war beast skin, and another helmet with a lot of snapped wires dangling from it.

"Another team brought in Elykris just before you got here. The Machinist, eh? Built all their tech. They'll be feeling it with her gone. The Mad Bomber, now. Nobody's been able to get him. He's killed thousands of Awoken with those mines of his. They hate him. Killing him is not just avenging Cayde. It's helping the Reef."

"How altruistic of you, Spider," said a strange voice. The group turned to see a tall, slender Awoken woman enter the room. Her blue skin was set off by her combed-over red hair, and she wore an eyepatch. Unlike the Guardians, she didn't bother with heavy armor or environment systems. But she did carry a set of impressive sidearms and their ammo.

"Ah, Petra Vanj," Spider said with a wheezy chuckle. "Been a while since your pretty face showed up here."

"It's been three cycles, Spider," Petra said. She put one hand on her hip and sized up the Guardians. "I see you found some friends, Madrid. All of you out for revenge?"

"More or less," Jayesh said.

"Yes," Kari and Nell snarled.

Petra grinned. "Any of these trophies over here yours?"

"The war beast skin," Madrid said.

Petra laughed once, and her smile vanished. "The Rifleman. Good. Cayde was a good man, and no Guardian deserves to watch their ghost die. Who you hunting next?"

"Mad Bomber," Madrid said. "He's been killing Guardians."

"Damn right he has," Petra muttered. "I put him in prison in the first place. Should have executed him. He'll transmat splinter mines and drop them behind your position. Don't shoot the mines, right? Have your ghost defuse them. It's your only hope."

The Guardians exchanged uneasy looks. That meant putting their ghosts in danger during a firefight.

Petra ignored this and faced Spider. "I tracked Uldren to Earth. He's abandoned his Crows and travels everywhere with a gang of Scorn. He went to this place called the Shard of the Traveler."

As one, the Guardians inhaled. Jayesh stepped forward. "Why would he go to the Shard? The Light is corrupted there."

Petra flipped her hair out of her face. "Not all of it, apparently. He used Cayde's Ace of Spades to blow open a fragment that still had Light in it. He stole a chunk, talking to thin air the whole time."

"He stole a piece of the Traveler?" Jayesh exclaimed, aghast. "But that's - that's blasphemy!"

Petra gave him a half-smile. "One of the more devout warlocks, aren't you? Uldren stealing Light doesn't worry me as much as why he stole it." She folded her arms. "Why would he do that, Spider?"

Spider leaned back in his throne. He folded two sets of hands across his paunch, and the other set fiddled with an ever-present ghost shell. Today it was a sphere-shaped one.

"Uldren wants something," Spider said after a while. "Awoken are balanced between the two energies you call Light and Darkness, eh? Why would he take Light unless he also intended to take Darkness?"

Petra thumbed her chin, gazing at the floor in thought.

"Also," Spider added, "who was he talking to?"

"Not his followers," Petra replied. "They stayed well back. Even Fallen hesitate to desecrate the Great Machine."

Jayesh muttered, "The Darkness whispers to those who seek it."

Petra shot him a quick look. "You think Uldren has sold himself to the Darkness? He's a criminal, but he's still the Awoken Prince, Guardian."

"Who else would he be speaking to?" Jayesh replied. "He's not insane. Or ... he didn't used to be."

Petra opened her mouth to respond, but hesitated, her brows lowering. Turning back to Spider, she said, "Uldren will be heading for the Watchtower next. If he can break into the Dreaming City, he'll be poised to destroy the entire Awoken people."

"Hmm," grunted Spider. "Can't do business without customers."

"Right." Petra glanced at the Guardians. "You lot, keep doing your jobs. Madrid ..." She stepped closer to him, lowering her voice. There was a kinship between the two Awoken, despite his being a Guardian. "Destroy his Barons before you destroy him. I know what Cayde's death did to you."

"Petra," Madrid said quietly, "if Uldren comes back to the Reef, I will hunt him to a standstill. And his life will end."

Petra gazed through the faceplate on his helmet for a long moment, then nodded and stepped back. "So be it. I'll be in touch."

She strode out of the cavern.

Spider watched her go. "Tough woman, that one. Glad she's on my side. Get along, you four. The Barons are disrupting my supply chains as we speak, and I want my town back."

The Guardians departed in silence.


	6. The Mad Bomber

Kaniks, the Baron known as the Mad Bomber, led Fireteam Vengeance on a winding chase through the meshed asteroids and ruined ships of the Tangled Shore.

He laughed at them on their radio frequency. "Oh look! New friends! I have a gift for you, friends!"

"Because that's super trustworthy," Nell muttered.

Kaniks heard her. "You hurt Kaniks's feelings, friend! It's a good gift! You like! You like!"

They couldn't talk with their enemy listening in. Kari motioned that she would take the lead. Jayesh hugged her, trying to convey his worry about this mission. She patted his back reassuringly, hefted her rifle, and headed down the hillside, into a rocky area with salvaged metal bent into rough buildings.

One of them immediately exploded in a ball of flame.

"Surprise!" Kaniks laughed. "Gift is death!"

"Some surprise that was," Phoenix muttered in Jayesh's head.

"Never saw it coming," Jayesh thought, scanning the smoke for Kari. She had been knocked down, but was scrambling to her feet as her ghost healed her. "I already don't like this guy."

They walked on a little way, peering into the ruined buildings, looking for their foe. Instead, an army of Scorn ambushed them from the last building.

"Sixty Scorn against four Guardians?" Nell laughed. "That's not even a fair fight ... for the Scorn!"

Jayesh hosed down a group of ravagers and their lanterns with his pulse rifle. "Is it Scorn or Scorns?"

"Scorns isn't a word!" Kari said, lobbing a grenade into the middle of a pack of screebs. They detonated, taking a quarter of their companions with them.

Madrid ran up a slanted roof, dropped to one knee, and fired off shots with his scout rifle. Each shot dropped an enemy. "I believe Scorn is plural, like sheep and sheep."

"Well, it's about to be singular," Nell replied. She charged into the midst of the enemy, summoned her golden gun, and spun in a circle, firing projectiles that instantly burned every enemy to a black skeleton.

"You very funny friends," Kaniks remarked, eavesdropping. "Hide and seek, seek and hide, you never find me!"

The team scanned in all directions, weapons ready. Nothing moved among the makeshift buildings, but that meant little.

"Present for you!" Kaniks said.

Light flickered in the middle of the buildings. A diamond-shaped object materialized out of thin air and dropped to the ground. Red lights began to blink at its ends.

"Splinter mine!" Kari exclaimed. "The Awoken use those to demolish asteroids. It'll kill everything for kilometers!"

"Cover me!" Jayesh called, sprinting toward the mine. In his head, he said to Phoenix, "Can you defuse this thing?"

"I think so," Phoenix replied. "But it'll take a minute or two. Please don't let anything shoot me."

"Please don't set off the mine," Jayesh replied. He reached the explosive and Phoenix materialized, extra-visible in his red and yellow shell. He zipped around the mine, scanning it with his beam.

"Incoming!" Kari yelled. She had followed Jayesh, and now stood guard nearby, gripping the submachine gun with the Spider mark on it. Scorn were transmatting into the area in swirls of sickly ether, rising to their feet with snarls and hisses, and drawing weapons.

Nell cut through a gang of them, wielding knives in either hand and laughing as the aliens slashed and shot her. Her ghost's healing was so quick, she barely felt the wounds. She arrived at the mine and drew her hand cannon, still laughing.

Madrid had detoured to the tallest building in the area, where he lay flat on its roof, picking off the aliens closest to his team with his scout rifle.

Jayesh stood over the mine and his ghost, defending them with prickles of terror running down his back. A stray arc bolt might hit the mine and set it off. Or Phoenix might take a bullet.

One thing he didn't take into consideration was being shot, himself. Jayesh took two bullets just below the ribcage that blasted the breath from his lungs. The pulse rifle turned to lead in his hands. He simply stood there, trying to keep his knees from buckling, keeping his body between his ghost and the Scorn.

Phoenix felt his pain. "Jay!"

"Finish the mine," Jayesh thought. "I can wait."

Phoenix kept working. Jayesh managed to hoist his rifle to his waist and spray a blast of suppression fire at three ravagers who ventured a little too close. One of them threw its flaming lantern-censor, which bounced in a spinning fireball straight at the mine.

Jayesh kicked the lantern back at the aliens, splashing them with their own fire. They shrieked. He swayed, off-balance, and nearly fell, but Kari caught his arm. She looked at the bloody holes in his chest piece, then at his face, though the helmet.

At that point Phoenix exclaimed, "Defused!" He instantly disappeared and healed his Guardian.

Jayesh drew a long breath as the pain faded. "I'm all right," he told Kari in an undertone.

She squeezed his arm in a silent expression of concern, so Kaniks wouldn't overhear. Then she gestured to the mine. Her ghost appeared, transmatted the mine somewhere, and disappeared.

"Do I want to know what you just did?" Jayesh asked.

"No," she replied.

Madrid spoke suddenly. "There, one o'clock."

The team looked up to see a huge, muscular Fallen watching them from outside the little town, about thirty yards away. He wore a bandolier across his chest studded with grenades, and carried a control device in one hand.

"Lightbearer, Lightbearer, I see you, Lightbearer," Kaniks sang in a hideous voice. Then he dissolved into violet ether and shot across the ground to vanish into a hole in the asteroid.

They jogged toward the hole. As they did, Nell said, "Lightbearer? That's a cool word. Why is he complimenting us?"

"Old word for Guardians," Kari said. "Risen, Lightbearers ... we were called a lot of things before we were called Guardians."

"That's cool," said Nell. "How do you know all that?"

"I'm a warlock," Kari replied. "I read."

"More to the point," Madrid said, "how does Kaniks know that?"

Kaniks laughed as if they'd told a fantastic joke. "I learn you language, I learn you culture. Prince Uldren ask, we do. And Eliksni still better than humans!"

"We can still kill you off," Nell retorted.

"Ha," Kaniks replied. "Anyone can murder. Eliksni. Cabal. Hive. Guardians. But we kill Cayde-6. Powerful Guardian, beg for life. 'Don't hurt me, please don't hurt me!' So sad."

These words sent unexpected pain through the whole team. They looked at Madrid. He shook his head once.

The hole in the ground was ten feet across, and looked like a crater that had cracked into a deeper level of the asteroid. A tunnel ran by underneath, and light filtered in from below. They jumped inside.

The tunnel wound its way down into the heart of the asteroid. Here the atmosphere was thicker. Water condensed on the walls and dripped from the ceiling. Moss had taken root along the walls, and hanging vines had climbed wherever a gap from the surface let sunlight down into the depths. After the barrenness of the Tangled Shore, the sight of greenery and life was a welcome surprise.

Of course, the Mad Bomber had retreated to this quiet place, probably in order to destroy it while trying to kill the Guardians.

Madrid gestured that he would take point this time. He led them at a cautious pace, pausing to peer around each new bend in the passage. They crept through supply rooms filled with sealed crates and stacks of ether tanks, but it was ominously devoid of life. Kaniks could be waiting anywhere, concealed.

"Contact," Phoenix whispered in Jayesh's head. "There." He indicated a red dot on Jayesh's helmet HUD. It was up ahead and around a corner.

All their ghosts had warned them at the same time. Madrid halted in thought for a moment. Then he motioned to Jayesh.

Phoenix whispered, "Message from Madrid. Talk to Kaniks. Keep him distracted. Madrid wants to find a sniping position."

Jayesh nodded, and so did Madrid. As the group crept forward, Jayesh said, "You understand why we're here, don't you, Kaniks?"

"You come to kill," Kaniks retorted. "All Guardians do. Kill, kill, kill."

"We're making sure that justice is served," Jayesh replied. "Aside from Cayde's death, you're responsible for the deaths of thousands of Awoken."

Kaniks laughed.

The Guardians turned a corner and came upon a cave riddled with explosives. They lay everywhere, orange canisters marked with hazard signs in three languages. The ceiling was supported by three stone pillars, all of which were ringed with explosives. Kaniks stood on a ledge at the back of the room, holding the control device in both hands.

Madrid held out one arm, preventing the team from entering. Then he knelt, studying the explosives and their layout.

"How you know of justice?" Kaniks spat. "You not know our laws. Weak must die, strong survive. Awoken weak. Humans weak. We take your worlds, we grow stronger. But you have Guardians and the Machine. Murderers. You all murderers."

"We fight to protect our home," Jayesh replied. "Your kind began the war, not us."

"Cayde-6 murder thousands of Eliksni!" Kaniks yelled, waving the control device. "He needed death. You murderers, too. Need death. I give it to you."

A gun screeched nearby, making the Guardians jump. Kari stood there with her graviton lance, beads of purple light flowing up and down the barrel. Kaniks flinched and staggered backward.

Kari fired again. This time she hit one of the grenades on Kaniks's bandolier.

The Mad Bomber exploded in a savage ball of orange. Unfortunately, he must have rigged his explosives with a dead man's switch, because the room's explosives blew with enough force to shatter the pillars and bring the ceiling crashing down.

The Guardians ran as the passage cracked and began to collapse, too. Jayesh saw the falling rocks and dust, had a vivid flashback of being buried, and panicked. "No, no, not again!"

Kari grabbed his hand and towed him along. "Just run!"

They reached the upper passage with the plants and moss as the entire cave system collapsed behind them, filling the upper passage with dust.

"Ghosts, transmat us to the surface," Madrid said.

"We're too deep, still," Rose said. "My sensors aren't steady enough to calculate correctly."

Madrid groaned and led them onward.

Jayesh was in such a haze of terror, he barely realized they'd found the exit hole until he was standing in the sun on the surface, nothing overhead but the dark sky with its billows of clouds. He drew deep breaths, gazed upward, and his racing pulse slowed.

"Well, that was a waste," Nell exclaimed, stamping in a circle. "We killed Kaniks, but we didn't get any proof. Spider won't pay us a shard of glimmer."

"I kept the defused bomb," Kari said. "That might convince him. If not, maybe Spider will buy it from us."

"Speaking of," Madrid said, rounding on Kari. "Why did you shoot Kaniks like that? I was going to flush him from cover by detonating his explosives."

"The cave would have still come down!" Kari exclaimed. "He still would have died!"

"He travels by ether charge," Madrid replied. "He would have run straight at us. I gestured for you to wait."

Kari folded her arms and stared across the barren landscape to the horizon. "I'm not a murderer," she whispered.

"Yeah, what was all that about?" Nell said, putting her hands on her hips. "We're soldiers in a war. It's not like we do this for fun."

"But this isn't a Vanguard movement, is it?" said Kari. "We're here on our own. We're killing people at the behest of a local crime lord. We're hit men. Not soldiers."

No one spoke for a moment. Then Madrid said, "Come on, let's go." He summoned his sparrow, mounted it, and took off in a cloud of dust.

Kari summoned hers and gestured to Nell, who climbed on behind her. Jayesh summoned his, an older model he had rebuilt himself and painted black with a yellow racing stripe. Together they flew after Madrid, who was making for Thieves Landing, where Spider lived.

* * *

 

Spider wouldn't pay the bounty without proof of Kaniks's death, just as Nell had predicted. He did, however, buy the splinter mine at what he called a generous price, but Neko told Kari was the lowest price on the market.

"Got another bounty for you," Spider told them. "Reksis Vahn, the Hangman. He's been busy capturing Servitors around here. Regular Fallen losing their minds with rage. Not that I mind that - offered to let them join me, they spit in my face, eh? - but I have Servitors, too. Can't afford to lose any. Double bounty on him. What do you say?"

Jayesh held out a hand. "Write it down."

Spider did, chuckling. "Make sure you bring back a trophy, eh? Transaction like this needs proof. Don't bury the body before you loot it."

"Any other bounties up?" Nell asked. "We might as well pick up everything."

Spider shrugged. "Another team already after the Trickster. If they don't come back, I give you the job, eh? Don't know where Sov and Fikrul got to. Mindbender keeps moving. Don't know if you lot could handle him. Might need a bigger team. And lots of Light, eh?"

Madrid bowed slightly. "Thank you for your assistance, Spider. We'll be in touch."

They left the cave and stood outside it, where the cliff wall blocked the wind. The abandoned town down below, otherwise called Thieves' Landing, had several dozen of Spider's porcupine Eliksni working on it. They stacked ruined materials to one side, while others were hard at work with cutting torches, rebuilding doors, wall panels, and other materials from the scrap. A spike-laden Servitor attended them, seeming to oversee the work.

"Madrid," Jayesh said, "we keep hearing second-hand accounts of what happened to Cayde. Would you mind setting us straight on the real story?"

Madrid stood there for a moment, the breeze stirring his cape around him. A black, tattered cape.

The one that had belonged to Cayde.

"You have a right to know," he said at last. "Transmat back to my ship. We can talk there. Rest. Eat."

"You're inviting us into your ship?" Kari said incredulously. "Don't you fly a tricked-out cruiser?"

"As much as I live in it during patrols," Madrid replied, "I wanted it to feel like home. Wipe your feet before you come in." He turned to summon his ghost, and Jayesh had a good look at his cape. Jayesh motioned to it, and Kari nodded. As Madrid left, Jayesh said, "Is stealing cloaks a hunter thing?"

"It's not stealing," Nell snapped. "When a hunter takes a cloak from a dead companion, he's promising to avenge that companion's death."

"Yes, that," Kari said.

Jayesh nodded humbly. "I didn't know that. Glad I asked you. I'm afraid I'm going to offend Madrid every which way because I don't understand hunter customs."

"He'll let it slide," Kari said. "Probably."

"How very reassuring you are," Jayesh replied.


	7. The dark side of revenge

Madrid's ship was twice the size of Kari's with a long body and four short wings along its length. As the fireteam climbed inside, Rose met them in her woven golden shell.

"Welcome aboard!" she said. "Please come this way."

They followed the ghost down the ship's main corridor, past the cockpit, two other rooms with closed, unlabeled doors, and through a third door into the galley. It was large enough for all four of them to sit comfortably around a little table that folded out from the wall. Madrid had a stack of ration packs waiting for them, and was heating water for tea as they entered.

The three pulled off their helmets in relief. "Excellent!" Nell exclaimed. "I am so sick of freezing my ass off out here."

"Have a seat," Madrid said, gesturing to the bench seats. "I'll tell the story once we have food in front of us. It's not easy to hear."

It wasn't. Madrid told them of helping Cayde and Petra suppress what they thought was a prison riot, but turned out to be a jail break, instead. Cayde took chance after chance, culminating in crashing the uppermost guard post through the center of the prison to try to intercept the escaping high security prisoners.

"Killed me on his way down," Madrid said. "I was laughing as Rose brought me back. What a character Cayde was." He smiled at the memory, the Light beneath his blue skin swirling a little faster.

The group nibbled their rations and waited for more.

Madrid sipped his tea. "The lower levels were filled with Scorn. Never seen them before. Gave me a devil of a time, trying to meet up with Cayde again. Felt his ghost die. They let off a pulse of Light like an EMP when they go." His fingers found Rose, who floated beside him. He caressed her shell a moment, frowning. "We ran after that. Killed everything in the way. But it didn't matter. Heard the shot from the Ace of Spades."

The team waited in suspense.

"Turns out," Madrid said, "Cayde landed right in the middle of the Barons and their minions. He was nearly a match for them, but they beat him up bad. When he summoned his ghost for healing, Pirrha shot her." He tilted his cup back and forth, swirling the dark liquid. "Glad I killed Pirrha."

"What happened?" Kari prompted.

"The shot I heard," Madrid continued, "was Uldren. Robbed Cayde as he lay there wounded. Shot him in the heart. Walked off. I arrived as Uldren and his filth were climbing into the surface lift. He waved at me with the Ace. 'He didn't feel a thing,' he said to me. With Cayde lying there, still alive, with a hole the size of the Tower in him."

The Guardians stared at him, some of Madrid's own cold, implacable rage spreading to them.

"Rose tried to heal him," Madrid went on. "But Guardians heal Guardians by cooperating with their ghosts. With his ghost gone, Rose couldn't mend him. She tried. My poor little light."

"I couldn't even ease his pain," Rose said in a low voice. "You've never known failure until you've encountered that."

Neko stirred beside Kari, leaning his shell against her cheek.

"I thought he was shot in the heart?" Jayesh said.

Madrid nodded. "Exo heart's different from a flesh heart. Different spot. More redundancies. Cayde had a little time. Gave me messages for Ikora and Zavala. Told me to take his cape. I promised him vengeance. He chuckled the whole time. Could barely breathe, but still had breath for that. Found the whole thing tragically funny. Then he slipped away. I watched the light in his eyes die. Tore me up. Petra arrived. We were so angry. I carried Cayde's body all the way back to the surface. I couldn't say much. Neither did she.

"The real blow was walking into the Tower with Cayde's body. First person I saw was Amanda Holiday. She called Zavala and Ikora. Amanda cried. Attracted the whole hanger. Everyone was devastated. Shouting the news. Then Zavala and Ikora got there. Hope I never witness something like that again. Cracked them both. The shock. Cayde seemed invincible. Like he'd always be there. And then ... there he was. Shrunken a little, somehow. His Spark was gone and we all felt it. The Tower was emptier that day."

The four sat there in silence, pondering the story.

Nell said, a little unsteadily, "So, Cayde didn't beg for mercy?"

Madrid shook his head. "I didn't see everything that happened, but he wasn't the begging type. My guess is that he gave them the finger with both hands as they took him down."

Jayesh grinned, turning his cup around and around. Then he shook his head and covered his eyes with one hand.

Kari clenched and unclenched both fists on the table. "I'd known Cayde for almost a century. Sounds like he went out in a blaze of glory. Avenging him doesn't seem much like murder anymore."

"No," Madrid muttered. "It doesn't. These Barons aren't like other Fallen we've dealt with. They're outcasts from their own kind. It's why they call themselves Scorn. They've all been locked in the Prison of Elders for years. And they're all dangerous as hell. This next one we're going after, the Hangman, Reksis Vahn? He kills Servitors. Drains their ether to corrupt it."

In Nell's head, Hadrian made a wordless cry of horror.

"But," Kari said, "I thought the Fallen worshiped their Servitors? I mean, the things generate ether to keep them alive."

Madrid shrugged. "Reksis Vahn destroys whole Houses of the Fallen by killing their Servitors. He's insane, like the rest of the Scorn. Hates being beholden to machines."

"Don't the Fallen worship machines?" Kari's ghost Neko said. "Including the Traveler?"

"Most do," Madrid said. "Reksis doesn't. You heard Spider. Spider's afraid of him, too." His face hardened as he pushed his empty cup to one side. "We'll have to pull together to take down Reksis Vahn. You're all adequate fighters, but we have to up our game. If we take down Vahn, we'll be after the big ones. Mindbender might kill us all, and if he doesn't get us, Fikrul might. And there's still Uldren doing Light knows what." He gave Kari a sharp look. "No more stupid mistakes."

Kari stared at the table, her cheeks turning red.

Jayesh leaned forward, deflecting Madrid's attention. "I'll certainly try harder. And I think I have an idea about fighting Reksis. Those holograms of Pirrha's. How good are you at casting Light constructs?"

Madrid's scowl gave way to a look of confusion. "Light constructs? Those jokes that kinderguardians make by drawing butts made of Light in midair?"

Jayesh grinned and stood up. "Watch this." He held up both hands, making quick, circular motions with his wrists. A life-sized Servitor appeared in midair above the table, sketched in lines of purple Light. It looked like a huge metal sphere with a glowing eye in the front, rather like a ghost. Jayesh moved one hand back and forth. The Servitor moved like a puppet, turning to look at each of them.

Nell laughed and clapped her hands. "How do you do that? I want to do that!"

Jayesh drew a silly happy face on the front, beneath the single eye. Then he waved a hand and the construct faded. "If we all cast images of fake Servitors, Reksis might get really confused. It would give us that few seconds of advantage."

Madrid stared at Jayesh as if he'd never seen him before. "How did you learn to do that?"

Jayesh grinned. "I entertained a lot of sick people during the plague two years ago."

Madrid, Kari, and Nell practiced creating Light Servitors until they could produce them flawlessly and send them flying around the room. Jayesh taught them tricks of concentration.

By the time they finished, the sun was speeding toward the horizon, and the temperature outside was dropping.

"Too late to hunt Reksis today," Madrid said, gazing out a tiny porthole. "The temperature would hurt us worse than any weapons. Be ready at dawn."

They left Madrid's ship and hiked a quarter of a mile to Kari's. The savage wind nearly froze them by the time they arrived. They climbed inside and huddled in the galley to warm up. Kari made them hot tea.

"Thanks," she told Jayesh, handing him a cup and sitting beside him.

"You're welcome," he murmured, pressing his shoulder against hers.

Nell watched them. "What, for distracting Madrid from chewing Kari out? He was going to. He had the look that Lord Shaxx gets."

Kari nodded, head bowed over her cup. "I know I wrecked that last mission. Not only did I cost us the bounty, but I almost got us all killed." She leaned her head against Jayesh's. "I know how you are about cave-ins."

Jayesh sipped his tea and didn't reply.

Nell scrutinized him. "Claustrophobic?"

When Jayesh still didn't answer, Kari said for him, "Something like that."

"I've got my own problems," Nell said. She held out one hand and summoned Hadrian. He blinked shyly at Kari and Jayesh, then hid his eye against Nell's hair.

"Will you tell them, or should I?" Nell murmured.

Hadrian slowly turned to face Kari and Jayesh, drawing his segments down as if trying to hide in his own shell. "My core operates on more than eighty-percent Servitor parts."

"Seriously?" Jayesh said.

"That's impossible," Kari exclaimed.

Nell nodded. "The Fallen caught him and rebuilt him over and over. It's why he has a complex about them. But this guy who kills Servitors ... Hadrian doesn't know if he can handle it."

"Just stay phased," Jayesh told the ghost. "Lie as low as possible. If none of us suspected that you're part Servitor, some random alien won't, either."

Hadrian opened his segments a little, gazing at Jayesh. "You don't ... hate me?" he whispered.

"Of course not," Jayesh said warmly. "It's not your fault, is it?"

Hadrian pressed himself into Nell's hair, peeking out between the strands. "They don't hate me," he murmured to her.

She patted him. "I told you they'd understand."

Jayesh felt a pulse of feeling from Phoenix, as if the ghost had choked back a heartbroken cry.

"Well, that's settled," Nell said, rising to her feet. "I'm going to bed." She moved wearily out of the galley. They heard her thump into her bunk on the other side of the wall.

Jayesh summoned Phoenix, and Kari summoned Neko. Each ghost immediately flew to their Guardian for hugs.

"Part Servitor," Phoenix whispered. "Dear Traveler, I had no idea. I knew he had problems, but I never thought-"

"No wonder Nell is so protective," Jayesh whispered. "You be extra kind, understand?"

"Of course," Phoenix replied. "Of course I will."

Nearby, Neko was whispering, "What if Hadrian's dangerous? He's not dangerous, is he?"

"I doubt it," Kari replied. "You've seen him heal and transmat and everything. He's still a ghost." She kissed Neko's royal blue shell. "You watch out for him. And be kind. You can be very kind when you want to be."

Neko sat quietly in her hand, studying her, his blue eye flicking back and forth. Finally, he said, "Anything for you, love."

Jayesh pretended not to hear this, and also pretended that it didn't make him slightly jealous. It was poor form to be jealous of another Guardian's ghost, when his own ghost loved him just as much.

They held their ghosts for a while. Then Jayesh said in a low voice, "Kari, I ... I saw the trees again."

She stiffened. "When?"

"Just glimpses. Flashes throughout the day. When you blew up Kaniks, I had a really strong, clear one. Trees and flowers, and ... a place in the middle of the wood. I can't quite see what's in there, but I need to go deeper."

Kari sat there for a long moment, stroking the back of his hand. "I had a glimpse when Kaniks died, too. Almost like the Darkness flinched and let the Light through."

"Yes!" Jayesh exclaimed. "That's exactly what it felt like."

"But it was just the once," Kari said. "Because ... when I pulled that trigger ... I heard a voice."

Jayesh twisted around to stare at her.

Kari avoided his eyes. "All it said was _Yes,_ but ... it wasn't any voice I've ever heard. It made me feel dirty inside. And then I saw the trees. Like the Darkness and Light were in me at the same second."

Jayesh wrapped his arms around her, as if trying to shield her from whatever evil she had awakened. Neko vanished, and so did Phoenix, but their alarm touched their Guardians anyway.

Kari resisted his hug a fraction until he let her go. Then she folded her hands in her lap and stared at them. "I've been so scared and guilty ever since. I lost control, Jay. He was calling us murderers, and I wanted to shut him up. And when I did ... something evil approved. It makes me think ... maybe I really am a murderer."

She finally checked his face. Jayesh looked troubled, gazing at her folded hands. He didn't speak for a long moment.

"I am, aren't I?" Kari said.

He drew a long breath. "Remember when we were flying into the Reef, and Darkness noticed us? We all felt it."

Kari nodded.

Jayesh hesitated, trying to focus his thoughts into words. "This place, Kari. There's Darkness here unlike anything we've ever seen ... except maybe on the Dreadnaught. It has a mind. What made Kaniks start talking about murder all of a sudden? What do you think put the thought in his head?"

Kari didn't reply. Inside, she was trembling, so far beyond her depth, she couldn't tell how to find her way back to sanity. She hung on her young husband's every word.

Jayesh was in the dark, too, feeling his way along. "Madrid pointed out that we're not carrying out vengeance so much as executing criminals who should have been put down years ago. And I think he's right. The Traveler told me that he's using us as his weapon out here in the Reef."

"Then ..." Kari took his hand. "Why did the Darkness approve of me killing Kaniks?"

He laid his other hand over hers. "I think ... at that moment ... you were under its sway."

"To kill the Darkness's own minion?"

Jayesh chose his words carefully. "To act in a way you knew was wrong."

Kari gazed at their interlaced hands, tears gathering on her eyelashes. "Jay, I'm so scared. I don't want to fall to the Darkness. But ... it spoke to me, and ... what do I do?"

He leaned his forehead against hers. "Speak to the Traveler with me?"

Kari had watched Jayesh commune with the Traveler. She'd tried it herself, once, and when it answered her by name, she'd been too terrified to try it again. But now, tainted by evil, she wanted Light to cleanse and restore her.

"Reach for your Light," Jayesh whispered. "Like you're summoning your super charge."

Kari did, feeling the crackling, electrical arc charge that waited deep within her. It was comfortingly familiar. Somehow, she also sensed Neko nearby, his spark interwoven with her own Light. Love flowed from him in a steady stream.

"Traveler," Jayesh whispered, "we need your Light tonight. We've come too close to the Darkness. Kari needs you. I need you."

"Traveler," Kari whispered, "I lost control. I'm sorry." In some metaphysical way, she gathered together the darkness, fear, and guilt, and held it out to the Traveler, like a child offering a handful of mud to a parent.

Light swept her. Kari's power strengthened, her electrical charge increasing. In addition to Neko's steady flow of love, a second stream touched her from a different direction, warm and comforting. Light swirled through her, alive and knowing, touching her most secret thoughts, where she liked killing, was good at killing, and revenge tasted sweet.

_Will you give me this, too?_

Kari fought to hold on to that scrap of Darkness. She liked it too much to let it go.

But then ... that scrap of Darkness had been what pulled the trigger on Kaniks. The word _murderer_ flitted across her mind.

Kari let go of the scrap. It faded and was replaced by Light. While she was still good at killing, the bloodthirsty delight was gone. But the desire for revenge could not be healed - it was merely a scab over a deep, festering wound of grief.

_Grieving is not wrong, Guardian. Using it to harm others, however, is._

"I'm sorry, Traveler," Kari said within herself. "The pain is so bad. Cayde didn't deserve to die like that."

_None of my Guardians do. The universe is not worthy of you._ The Light touched her with a hint of the Traveler's own grief. With a shock, she realized that it mourned Cayde's passing, too.

Light swept her again.

Inside her mind, behind her eyelids, she saw the white trees. They glimmered like moonlight on water, comforting, beautiful, unearthly. She looked about inside the vision. To one side was an opening in the trees, allowing her a view of mountains surrounding a valley. Yellow, jagged mountains, with the ruins of a circular construct in the valley floor.

She gasped and opened her eyes. Beside her, Jayesh did the same, releasing her hands and grabbing the bench to keep himself from pitching onto the floor.

"I saw where the forest is!" Kari exclaimed. "That valley on Io!"

"I saw it, too," Jayesh panted. "I think - maybe the Traveler wants us to go there?"

Kari's heart beat hard, both from the excitement of this realization, and from the Traveler's touch. "Do you think the forest will be there?"

"I don't know." Jayesh turned to her, the golden light of his Dawnblade power flickering in his eyes. "You felt it, right? The Traveler gave us more Light. And that vision."

"Yes!" Kari said. "It spoke to me. It's so kind, Jay. I see why you're so passionate about it. It's still Other, but ... it cares." She couldn't put into words the way it had cleansed her and sympathized with her grief. It meant more to her than she could express.

They gazed at each other, holding hands, seeing the Light burning in each other's eyes. Kari leaned close and kissed Jayesh - a long, grateful kiss. As she did, she realized that it was his love that she'd sensed alongside Neko's. It still flowed into her, powerful and potent, a secondary source of Light. Her own Light flared up and mingled with his.

"I think," she whispered as she slipped her arms around his neck, "we'd better go to bed."

"I think," he murmured, "that's a very good idea."


	8. The Hangman

"Phoenix, wake up," Neko whispered.

Both ghosts were phased for the night, and Phoenix awoke, grumbling. "What's wrong? The Traveler was talking to me and you had to go interrupt."

"Sorry," Neko said. "But ... our Guardians are messing up their Light."

Phoenix glanced toward Jayesh's spark, currently blazing like a bonfire. This happened fairly often, and Phoenix had lost interest months ago. "Looks fine to me, Neko. I'm going back to sleep."

Neko nudged him. "They're braiding their Light together! It's changing his Dawnblade and her Stormcaller!"

Phoenix looked at the combined Light of their Guardians. "So what? Let them love each other, Neko. Whatever's happening to their Light, it's making them stronger. There's certainly no Darkness."

"No Darkness," Neko agreed slowly. "I just don't want them to lose this Reksis fight tomorrow because of mingling their Light."

"You worry too much, Neko," Phoenix replied. "If their Light wasn't supposed to mix, it wouldn't be able to. Besides, after walking in the Darkness like they have, they could use a little more Light." He paused a second. "You're jealous, aren't you?"

"No," Neko snapped. "Well ... maybe a little."

Phoenix made a sound like a sigh. "Aren't you glad your Guardian's mate loves her so much?"

A little flicker of shame radiated from Neko. "Yes, of course."

"Good. Now leave me alone, I want to go back to talking to the Traveler."

"What's it saying?" Neko asked.

Phoenix's eye winked off. "A long story about trees." Pretty soon he was sound asleep again.

Neko stayed awake and worried until his Guardian's blazing Light died down a little. To his relief, Kari's power seemed to return to her, intact. But to his practiced eye, the Stormcaller power seemed to have flickers of fire in it.

Finally Neko dozed, too. As he did, he felt the Traveler's reassuring presence.

_Come, little light. I have a story to tell you._

* * *

"And then the woodcutter struck the tree," Hadrian told Nell the next day, as they hunted Reksis Vahn. "The trunk shattered like glass, and the tree groaned as it died. But then, thousands of fireflies emerged from their hiding places in its leaves. They attacked the woodcutter, tearing the axe from his hands. But the woodcutter had two sisters ..."

"When you said it was a long story," Jayesh thought to Phoenix, "you weren't kidding."

Phoenix's laugh was nearly a giggle.

Hadrian had enthusiastically told Nell the Traveler's story for the entire hour-long sparrow ride out to Quitter's Well, speaking over the open frequency, so the other Guardians and ghosts could hear, too. The ghosts had all had the same dream with the same story, but the only Guardian who hadn't heard it was Madrid. For some reason, Rose had kept it to herself. He listened in silence.

Quitter's Well had once been the core of a ship, now used as a support structure for the asteroid around it. A series of tunnels ran deep into the rock, branching and twisting, a confusing labyrinth of stone and metal.

The Guardians reached it at the Tangled Shore's mid morning, interrupting Hadrian's long account. As they dismounted from their sparrows, Madrid said, "I'm taking point again. This time, everyone sticks to the strategy. Right?"

Everyone nodded.

"Good." Madrid hefted his scout rifle and led the way down into the tunnels.

Jayesh touched Kari's arm and gestured to ask if she was all right. She nodded firmly. Relieved, he fell into step beside her. She'd been steadier since the night before - talking to the Traveler made such a difference. So did expressing his love to her, although Jayesh still doubted himself when it came to such things. His Light might burn for her, but was that the best thing for her? He didn't know. He sighed as he walked.

They rounded a bend and came upon a wide spot in the passage. One wall held three cages with a Servitor inside each. The huge metal spheres lay in the bottom of the cages, their purple eyes flickering. Huge cuts and gashes scored their metal sides, exposing the circuitry and wiring beneath. One of them leaked purple ether in pathetic wisps that sank to the floor and spread out in a fog.

The Guardians stared at the robots in dismay. Hadrian made a faint, shivering cry.

"Why would the Fallen destroy their own Servitors?" Kari breathed. "Servitors make the ether that keep Fallen alive!"

"The Hangman destroys them," Madrid said. "Remember what Spider said."

"I don't have much sympathy for Servitors," Neko said, "but ... this makes me sick."

They moved on, leaving behind the caged, dying robots, only to find more and more. Some were caged, while dead ones had been shoved into corners, or hung from the ceiling in nets.

It was a relief to come upon a pack of Scorn. They were busily pulling a Servitor to pieces and stacking the parts in piles for salvage. But at the sight of Guardians, they threw down their tools, pulled out weapons, and attacked.

The team dispatched the Scorn as a matter of course. But Nell fought them hand to hand with her knives, going to great trouble to stab each spider-like Eliksni in the eyes. Before they moved on, she checked the bodies of the ones her team had killed and stabbed their eyes, too.

"Should we be worried?" Kari asked her, as Nell wiped her knives on the cape of a dead alien.

Nell holstered her knives with a snap. "My ghost is crying. You try fighting these scum with that in your head."

The deeper into the tunnels they went, the hotter the fighting, and the more dead and dissected Servitors they found. Nell heeded Madrid's instructions just enough that he never had to tell her off. But she also never pulled out her firearms. She spun through the Scorn like a dervish of whirling blades, taking awful injuries that her ghost healed almost instantly.

Her team watched this in growing awe and concern.

"Is her ghost really crying?" Jayesh asked Phoenix.

"Yes," Phoenix replied. "But he's also the fastest healer I've ever seen. Maybe he doesn't know he's crying."

"Could you heal me that fast?"

"Maybe," Phoenix said doubtfully. "If I practiced. And you were stupid with knives a lot."

They followed a passage winding downward at a steep angle. At the bottom were more cages. Madrid, in the lead, stopped dead and stared into them, his rifle barrel drooping toward the floor. The others joined him and looked, too.

An Awoken man lay dead in the cage, his hands still tied behind him. His clothing and skin were badly burned, and Light no longer flowed under his skin.

"The Hangman tortures people, too?" Kari whispered.

Madrid touched one of the bars, then shook his head. "There's nothing we can do for this one. Come on, there may be others we can help." His voice was soft with rage.

The fireteam moved on to another room, angry and upset on an entirely new level. Jayesh was concerned about Madrid, now, too. As an Awoken, finding his people being murdered hit too close to home. What might the Darkness be whispering to him?

The next room held three ravagers, all carrying burning lantern-censors, moving around a roomful of cages. These contained more Servitors, still alive, their purple eyes moving as they watched their doom approach. Some of them spoke to the Scorn in the Eliksni language, their digital voices deep and croaking. But the aliens only laughed and slammed their censors against the cage bars, splashing the robots with burning liquid. The robots screamed.

At least two of them were covered in the porcupine-blades that Spider used to distinguish his own House.

"Shoot the censors," Madrid said. He dropped to one knee, aimed, and fired. One censor exploded, dousing its ravager in fire. The alien shrieked and flailed. Its companions whirled to attack the Guardians, swinging their censors as weapons.

Kari shot a censor. Jayesh shot the third alien through the head. As the other two aliens slowly burned to death, Jayesh shot them, too.

As Madrid glared at him, Jayesh said, "We're Guardians. Not torturers." Then he ran into the smoke-filled room, blasted open the locks on the cages, and freed Spider's Servitors.

The two robots had blackened streaks across their metal, but their eye-lights glowed steadily as they floated into the middle of the room and faced the Guardians. One of them spoke in Eliksni.

Nell said, "It's thanking us."

As it continued to speak, Nell interpreted. "There are two other Servitors belonging to Spider in the execution chamber. He also has a large number of captured Awoken who were to be executed today. If we act quickly, we may save some of them." Then she bowed her head, raising one hand to her ear, as if comforting the invisible Hadrian.

The Servitors led them deeper into the tunnels, stopping only to blast Scorn with energy missiles from their eyes.

"These guys are handy," Jayesh thought.

"It's nice to have them on our side," Phoenix agreed. "I just don't care for them. They're like huge, primitive ghosts. It would be like you running around with cavemen."

"Cavemen are fine as long as they use their clubs on the enemy," Jayesh thought, dropping three Scorn at once. "Do you understand the Servitors?"

"About one in five words," Phoenix replied. "Hadrian is fluent in Eliksni. Now we know why."

Jayesh watched as Nell defended one of the porcupine Servitors with her blades. "Phoenix, if you'd been through what Hadrian's been through, I'd be out there causing undue pain and suffering, too."

"Is it really undue?" Phoenix said, as they passed the smoldering remains of another caged robot. "Or is it just?"

Jayesh had no answer for this. They climbed a set of steps, hacked a security door, and found the Hangman's execution chamber.

It was a huge cavern with a ceiling that reached nearly to the surface of the asteroid. Cages were stacked in gloomy pillars against the walls. The uppermost ones were empty, but Servitors and human figures occupied the lower levels. Chains with hooks on the ends dangled from the ceiling. They might have been for moving cages - or maybe not. The floor and walls were splattered with rusty red stains.

As the Guardians entered, several ravagers stepped out from behind the cages, swinging their censors, which dripped burning fuel. And beyond them rose a towering Eliksni in armor, holding a censor like a burning morning star, complete with deadly spikes.

"You can see which one got to consume the most ether," Phoenix muttered to Jayesh.

"Don't hurt the prisoners," Madrid told the team. "Eliminate the guards. Isolate Vahn. Stay clear of his censor."

"Tall order, don't you think?" Kari said, pulling out her graviton lance.

"Guardians!" roared the Hangman, and the room erupted into fiery chaos.

There was no time to create Light constructs in this fight. Somewhere between the censors smashing on the ground and erupting into pools of fire, pumping bullets into Scorn, and extinguishing his own robes when they caught fire, Jayesh found himself ducking behind a cage with an Awoken woman in it. She huddled against the back of the cage, as far from the fighting as she could get. As Jayesh knelt to reload his pulse rifle, he and the woman locked eyes. Her eyes glowed a desperate green, and her skin was a sickly gray, instead of blue. "Guardian," she whispered.

"Hang on a little longer," he told her, and dropped a healing rift on the ground below her cage. Light swirled back into her at once. The occupants of the cage above hers stirred, too.

Jayesh locked his rifle magazine in place and sprang back into the fight, looking to stick a grenade to Vahn's back. He nearly succeeded, but Vahn spun about, swinging the deadly burning mace. It struck Jayesh so hard that his sternum cracked beneath his armor. Jayesh flew across the room and collided with another cage, where he slumped, barely conscious. Fuel burned across his robe and pants.

Several hands reached out of the cage, beating at the flames, folding his robe to smother the fire. As Phoenix mended his injuries, Jayesh blinked and saw a cage full of children all cooperating to help him. They were dirty and their clothes were torn, but their glowing eyes showed they were Awoken.

He sat up, reaching for his rifle, shocked and grieved - and angry. "Thank you," he told them. He dropped another healing rift beneath them, then threw himself back into the battle.

Meanwhile, Kari and Nell had been relentlessly hunting the Hangman around and around his lair. Madrid had climbed a stack of cages and had blasted off portions of Vahn's armor with expertly-placed bullets. Kari ducked a blow from the burning censor and punched the alien in the face with lightning. Vahn shook it off, snarling, and punched her in the face - with a hand dripping burning fuel.

As Kari reeled backward, blinded and burning, Nell crept up behind the alien and stabbed both her knives to the hilt in his back. The alien's breath left him in a huff. He whirled, swinging his mace at her, tearing the knives out of her hands.

Nell danced backward, laughing. Fire raced down her right arm to her hand, where it formed a golden gun. She blasted Vahn with glowing projectiles made of Light.

At the same time, Jayesh attacked from the other side, shooting the burning mace with a powerful burst of bullets.

The censor exploded, covering Vahn in burning fuel. Between the fire, the knives, and Nell's bullets, the Hangman collapsed to the floor and died, corrupted ether puffing between his teeth as he breathed his last.

Jayesh ran to Kari, who sat on the floor, staring at nothing, even though her robes were aflame. Jayesh beat them out, burning himself in the process. "Kari! Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you, but I can't see," she said shakily.

"Neko, do your job," Jayesh snapped.

"Give me a minute!" the ghost snapped back. "I was fighting to keep her healed _as she was on fire_."

Madrid climbed down from his perch. "Good work, everyone. Nell, take Vahn's helmet."

Nell was wrestling her knives loose from the alien's back. "In a minute."

Madrid circled the room, investigating the cages and speaking to the Awoken prisoners. He pulled off his helmet and let them see that he was one of them. The Awoken relaxed a little. They told him that the Hangman carried the cage keys - shooting the locks open was too dangerous.

Madrid searched the alien's gear, found a set of keys, and began unlocking cages. Prisoners stumbled out, in various stages of injury or starvation.

Jayesh stayed beside Kari until she blinked and looked at him with a brave smile. He hugged her and helped her to her feet. They surveyed the prisoners and their poor condition.

"I think it's time for some rift stacking," Kari said.

"I think so, too," Jayesh said.

The warlocks approached the prisoners. "Everyone," Jayesh called, "we've got healing magic here. Anybody needs healing, come stand in the Light." He and Kari dropped their healing rifts, one on top of the other, doubling the strength of the Light.

The prisoners stepped into the circle and exclaimed in relief as their pain faded. Madrid moved to one side and contacted Spider to ask about rescue craft.

The woman Jayesh had seen at first pushed her way through the crowd, several children clinging to her garments. "Guardian, I wanted to thank you."

"You're quite welcome," Jayesh replied, shaking her hand. "And I owe these brave children my thanks. They put out the fire rather than let me burn to death."

The children smiled shyly and hid behind their mother.

The woman said, "Could you put a call through to the satrap at Dream River? The Scorn kidnapped us from there. I don't know where we are, now."

"Quitter's Well," Jayesh said. "About forty miles from Dream River. We'll get you back, ma'am, don't worry."

* * *

In the end, it was done, although it took the rest of the short day to make the necessary contacts, summon a ship, escort the people aboard, and send them home. Mostly, everyone sat around and waited.

Jayesh had a chance to talk to Madrid. They were sitting in the entrance to the Hangman's hideout, watching Spider's Servitors flying back and forth as they stood guard. Madrid had put his helmet back on and sat with his rifle in his lap, gazing at the jagged horizon.

"Good job in there today," Jayesh told him, sitting across from him with his own rifle. "You're much better at leading a fireteam than I am."

"Experience," Madrid replied. "You'll get there."

They sat in silence for a while, watching for enemies, or the Awoken ship that was on its way.

"Mind if I ask a question?" Jayesh said.

Madrid shrugged.

Jayesh gazed out at the sky. "When Kari shot the Mad Bomber ... just for a second, she heard a voice in her head saying, 'Yes'."

Madrid gave him a sharp look.

"I wondered if you'd heard anything like that," Jayesh concluded.

Madrid sat motionless for a long moment. He lifted his rifle, turned it this way and that, then set it down again. "I think I have."

Jayesh waited.

After a moment, Madrid went on, "It's whenever we're near Scorn or a Baron. Anywhere with corrupted ether. The voices will whisper. I've heard talk of ghosts out here, so I thought maybe I was hearing that. Unhappy voices. Always talking about madness and death."

Jayesh didn't know what to make of this. "Is it Darkness?"

"Something of its ilk," Madrid replied. "Oryx blasted the whole Reef, remember. So many people were Taken. I wonder if I haven't been hearing their echoes. I'm Earthborn, not Reefborn, so my connection here isn't as strong, but I still hear things."

Jayesh pondered this with a quiver in his middle. "Are there still Taken here?"

"Taken occur wherever the Darkness sends them," Madrid replied. "I haven't seen any, but that means nothing."

They sat in silence for a while. Then Jayesh said, "The Traveler's been giving me visions of white trees."

"You always were a mystic," Madrid said shortly.

There was a short silence. Jayesh didn't know how to take this. "Haven't you?"

"I don't dream about the Traveler. Or talk to it. Or think about it."

"Oh. Well." Jayesh fiddled with his rifle. "Kari and Nell have had the same dream. We think the Traveler wants us to go to Io."

Madrid didn't speak for a moment. "Well. It's closer than Earth, I suppose. Will you be gone long?"

"I hope not more than two days, allowing for travel time."

Madrid rose to his feet, as if tired of the conversation. "Go on your vision quest, then. I'll continue the hunt out here. Somebody's got to."

Madrid walked off, leaving Jayesh feeling like he'd been slapped in the face.


	9. Seed of Light

On Io, things got weird.

Kari, Jayesh, and Nell flew in and landed near the valley with the half-built construct in the center. The Traveler had once begun to terraform the volcanic moon, converting the sulfuric atmosphere into nitrogen and oxygen, isolating the volcanoes, and allowing hot springs to erupt everywhere. But the Traveler had been interrupted, and remnants of its Light still boiled out of the ground in places, undirected and dangerous.

Trees had once flourished among the springs, but they had died long ago, only their shattered trunks and sprawling roots indicating their existence. The three Guardians stood in the shadow of one such stump as they gazed across the valley to the construct in the center.

"No white trees," Nell said mournfully. "I was hoping we'd find that forest here."

"If it's a real place," Kari said, gazing at Io's depressingly real landscape. "And not some dream metaphor."

"It is real," Jayesh said with conviction. "It's just ... not on this plane." He gazed into the valley, considering the drop. "Do you suppose we could glide down?"

"We could, but Nell's a hunter," Kari said. "And that valley is a mile deep."

Light flashed. The Guardians looked up to see a column of Light burst out of the valley floor and shine straight up into the heavens. A shockwave of Light accompanied it, billowing toward them.

"Here we go," Jayesh said, a thrill racing through him.

The shockwave struck, making each of them stagger backward a pace. And just like that, Jayesh was alone. Kari and Nell had vanished. Yet they had not gone - Jayesh sensed them nearby. This must be a vision.

"Guardian Jayesh," came the Traveler's voice. It was strong and joyful, different from the way it spoke when he communed with it. This was a place of power.

Jayesh dropped to one knee and bowed his head. "I'm here, Traveler."

"You are my faithful healer," the Traveler said. "But you must also learn to fight."

"I do!" Jayesh exclaimed, rising to his feet. "I fight for you, Traveler!"

"Then fight for me now," the Traveler said. "Look behind you."

Jayesh spun around. Where before had been only bare rock, now there stood the trees of his dream. Yet they were not a forest - they were scattered, wilted, the Light within them blackened and diseased. The ground beneath them shimmered with puddles of black, like ink. And out of these puddles rose the Taken.

Beings of pure Darkness, each Taken had the form of the creature it had once been - a Vex robot, or a Cabal, or a Fallen. But they had been consumed and vomited back into reality as puppets of the Darkness, reality itself burning and peeling away from them around the edges.

Jayesh lifted his pulse rifle, drawing deep breaths as panic seized him. "Phoenix, are you still with me?"

"I'm here, Jay," his ghost reassured him. "You're not completely alone."

"Talk to me," Jayesh said as the Taken advanced, flinging bolts of energy that burned the rocks around him. He fired at the white blob of un-light on the forehead of each demon. Instead of dying, each one merely dissolved in a swirl of black that vanished as if being sucked into a hole.

"I'm not entirely sure any of this is real," Phoenix said. "I'm still in contact with Neko and Hadrian, but we're all blocked from open communication. This is like ... a simulation."

An energy bolt hit Jayesh in the collarbone, burning through his light armor. "It sure hurts like reality."

Phoenix healed him. "I could be wrong. Maybe this is another dimension?"

Jayesh mowed down the smaller monsters and dispatched a huge one with a shield that had once been Cabal. No more Taken arose from the blackness around the tree. In fact, the black burned away like smoke, leaving the tree's trunk white once more. Delicate leaves unfurled from its branches. Jayesh gazed at it, all the more awestruck to see it in person.

"The trees of the Garden grow in both directions," the Traveler said. "Backwards, into the past, and forward, into the future. The red flowers bloom forever."

As Jayesh tried to understand this, the tree dissolved into sparkles of Light.

"Look around you," the Traveler continued. "My forest is beset by Darkness. Will you overcome your own dread and face it with me?"

Jayesh looked and saw more trees, all ringed by black corruption, all spawning Taken. His heart clenched and his breathing turned ragged. "I'm not afraid of Taken. Not anymore!" Repeating this to himself, he raised his rifle and attacked.

* * *

When Kari found herself alone, she called, "Jayesh? Nell? What happened?"

"Guardian Kari," said the Traveler.

Kari froze, gripping her rifle. Even having spoken to the Traveler once already, nothing prepared her for this audible voice speaking from the air.

She had to swallow before she could answer. "Y-yes, Traveler?"

"You have long stood at my side," the Traveler said. "You defiled the Black Garden in my name. You toppled Oryx and left no one to replace him."

Kari stood speechless. She'd never thought of it that way. It hadn't occurred to her to even want Oryx's vile throne world.

"But now," the Traveler continued, "I need you to fight for me once more. Will you aid me?"

"I will," Kari said, raising her graviton lance. "You terrify me, but the Darkness is worse."

The Traveler's amusement touched her like a ray of sunlight. "Your honesty is refreshing. Now, look. The Taken are invading my forest."

Kari turned to see the same thing Jayesh had - the beautiful trees being fouled by the Taken and their Darkness. But she had fought them many times before, and they didn't horrify her the way they did Jayesh.

"Get ready, Neko," she said. "It's time to spread the Light."

He laughed.

* * *

Nell didn't even notice she was alone. When the Traveler called her name, she stood enraptured.

"It's the Traveler," she said to Hadrian. "The Traveler is talking to me!"

Hadrian phased into being beside her, staring into the Light on the distant valley floor. "I'm unworthy," he whispered.

Nell cupped a protective hand beneath her ghost. "Traveler, Hadrian is mostly Servitor. He's so ashamed. Is there anything you can do?"

"Child of my heart," the Traveler said, a flicker of light surrounding Hadrian. "Are you defined by your shell's design?"

"No," Hadrian replied, trembling a little. "Shells can be changed. It's the core that stays the same."

"You bear the same spark I gave you," the Traveler said. "The mechanical parts mean little. Abandon fear and embrace the gladness of serving your Guardian."

Hadrian's eye brightened. "Yes ... yes, thank you, Traveler!"

"Now, Guardian Nell," the Traveler said, "you have had little direction beyond protecting your ghost. But humanity must have protectors, too. Will you stand with me?"

"I will, Traveler!" Nell exclaimed, lifting her knives, hilts outward. "Tell me what to do!"

"Slay the Taken," the Traveler replied.

Nell had never seen Taken before, but the sight of them defiling the star trees made her blood boil. She sheathed her knives and pulled out her hand cannon. "I'm not getting close to these things. Let's see how they react to bullets."

* * *

Jayesh fought his way from tree to tree, cleansing the Taken corruption. To his surprise, some trees were already free of the Darkness and glowed for a while before dissolving.

"What's doing that, do you think?" he panted to Phoenix.

"I'm only guessing, here," his ghost replied, "but I think it might be Nell and Kari. We can't see them, but I'll bet they're fighting, too."

This cheered Jayesh to think that his fireteam was nearby, and they were helping each other. Some of his creeping dread of the Taken faded.

The further into the trees he went, the more he felt that he was walking into his dreams. The trees weren't exactly the same, but he was moving toward the center of the wood - the important place, where he sensed he must go. His sense of the Traveler remained strong, too, which constantly reassured him. This was some kind of test, and he wanted to pass.

In the center of the wood was a tree different from the others. As soon as Jayesh saw it, his entire being thrilled - because it was his tree. In some metaphysical way, this was the way the Traveler represented him in this place - a tall, strong tree of shimmering white wood and branches. A single red flower bloomed beneath it.

And then, before his eyes, a vile black portal opened above the tree. A globe of seething Darkness emerged - a thing called a blight - and engulfed his tree in shadows. The bark blackened, and the leaves curled and withered away. The red flower vanished into darkness.

Jayesh staggered as if the blight had reached inside him and squeezed his heart. "Phoenix," he gasped, a roaring filling his ears.

"You must fight," the Traveler said. "You must fight to your dying breath, Guardian Jayesh."

Phoenix made a soft, anguished sound. "Jay - what's happening-"

The tree was withering, twisting, as if being burned without fire. Jayesh felt it, his entire being tormented by the Darkness's grasp.

In desperation, he reached for his Dawnblade power. He feared that the Darkness might have already destroyed it, but there it was, blazing inside him like always. He called on it, engulfing himself in Light, a blazing sword appearing in his hand. The Darkness's grip on him slipped.

With a war cry of terror and fury, Jayesh charged the blight, slashing with his sword. Each slash sent a wave of fiery Light into the core of the blight, tearing away the Darkness layer by layer.

The blight fought back, summoning hundreds of Taken to beat him back. Jayesh faltered, slowing to fight the foot soldiers of Darkness, losing sight of the tree and the blight infecting it.

"Jay," Phoenix moaned. "It's got me, Jay ..."

"Stay with me!" Jayesh cried. "Don't you dare die here, Phoenix!" He aimed a fiery slash at the foot of the tree, where the red flower had been.

The Light tore apart the shadows there, revealing the scarlet petals of the flower, still standing bravely amidst the Darkness, despite being so delicate. Jayesh sprang forward to stand over it, turning his back to the Taken, and used the last of his power to hack and slash at the blight.

Burning bolts tore into his back, piercing his robe and the armor beneath, but Jayesh fought on. "You can't Take Phoenix!" he yelled. "And you can't Take me!"

His power was nearly gone. Jayesh reached inside himself for one last blow, and found lightning. Kari's power. He grasped it and flung a blue bolt into the blight.

It compressed on itself, shrinking to nothing with a shriek, dragging the Taken soldiers with it. With a cacophony of screams, the demons vanished back into the Darkness that had spawned them.

Jayesh collapsed to the ground at the foot of the tree, sheltering the flower with both arms, pain searing through him from the energy bolts that had torn into his back. In the sudden silence, he heard Phoenix crying, very quietly.

Jayesh summoned him. The ghost was unharmed, but badly shaken. He continued making the pathetic sound as he flew around and around his Guardian, healing his wounds.

Above them, the tree shook off the blackness, turning white once more. The leaves grew again, casting dappled shade across the Guardian lying beneath it.

Footsteps approached. Jayesh lifted his head. The Traveler's avatar was walking toward him, dressed in a white robe with golden trim, a hood pulled over his head.

Slowly Jayesh struggled to his feet. Despite Phoenix's healing, a deep weariness pervaded his being. "I fought hard, Traveler."

"You did well," the avatar said. "This was an illustration of what the Darkness desires to do to you. You will face it soon, and now you will be forewarned."

Jayesh didn't know if he could handle another encounter like that. He looked at Phoenix, who had ceased whimpering and floated beside him in reverent silence. "It tried to take my ghost."

"It will try," the Traveler said. "Protecting him is your first priority. Do you know your second?"

Jayesh shook his head.

"Your wife," the Traveler said gravely. "The two of you are one, as a ghost is one with its Guardian. Your Light is one, and you are stronger together. But just as a Guardian is lesser without their ghost, so are you two lesser apart. Let no one destroy your relationship, and do not let it decay. It is your own Garden of Light, and you must tend it."

This was an extra level of frightening, on top of everything he'd been through. Jayesh bowed. "Thank you, Traveler. I ... don't really understand."

"You will, in time," the Traveler said with a smile. He reached up into the tree's branches, plucked some small, glowing thing, and held it out to Jayesh.

Jayesh took it. It was a hard little object that rested in the palm of his hand.

"This is a Seed of Light," the Traveler said. "It will grant you a blessing upon your Light, but use it wisely."

Phoenix scanned it and gasped. "Traveler ... this is a kingly gift. And you're bestowing it on us?"

"You and all who dare to follow your visions to this place," the Traveler replied. "My Guardians must grow stronger to defeat the coming storm. Even then, our chances of survival are slim. Return to the reef, Guardian. Your ghost will instruct you on how to use the seed."

Jayesh bowed again, clutching the seed. "Thank you, Traveler. I hope to become a fighter worthy of you."

The avatar began to spin apart in sparkles of Light. "If healing is where your heart truly lies, then I grant you my blessing. Or ... you may do both."

The Traveler disappeared, and so did the white tree with its solitary flower. The landscape returned to being simply Io with its yellow rock and muggy atmosphere.

"So," Jayesh said, holding out the seed to Phoenix, "what do I do with this?"

"It's additional Light," Phoenix said. "Like a seed, it will grow and flourish as you draw on it. It's also a hotbed of potential. You can use it to become a mighty warrior ... or a legendary healer. That's up to you."

Jayesh rolled the seed back and forth in his palm, thinking hard. He fought because he had to, but his real desire was to heal and restore. He had helped heal people of a deadly plague the winter after the Red War, even pioneering rift stacking to make warlock powers more efficient. He'd also learned to create Light constructs and puppeteer them for the delight of an audience. The majority of his energy had always been directed toward restoration of the body and mind.

"I want to be a healer," he told Phoenix at last. "If we're going to be in such danger that the Traveler warned me to protect you and Kari ... I want to do that. Heal and protect. I don't even know if that's possible."

Phoenix gazed at his Guardian pensively, then at the seed. "I'll have to bind the power to your Dawnblade," he said. "You'll use your blade to cast a healing rift, but together, the powers will destroy enemies and grant your allies Light. Lots and lots of Light. Is that what you want?"

Jayesh considered this. "So ... I couldn't use my sword to attack, only heal?"

Phoenix nodded. "But I think the power would grow from there. Your healing sword will make you a terror to your enemies."

Jayesh gazed at the seed. "All right. It's a big step, but ... I think it'll be worth it. If we have to face Taken again, I won't stand a chance without more Light."

Phoenix flew forward and swept the seed with his beam. It turned into a cloud of sparkling particles and flowed into the ghost's core.

"Ugh, this is powerful," Phoenix said. Light shimmered around him in midair, giving him an echo of the fiery wings granted to Jayesh by the Dawnblade power. He flew in front of Jayesh, opened his shell, and poured Light into his Guardian.

Jayesh had expected a blast of fire. Instead, the seed's power entered his being as a wash of coolness, refreshing and restoring. It wove itself into his soul, empowering the existing Light, somehow touching both Phoenix and Kari at the same time.

"You know," Phoenix said, "I never had a chance to thank you. For ... for saving that flower."

Jayesh opened his eyes to see Phoenix still glowing in a nimbus of gold. The ghost didn't seem to notice. He looked down. "That was ... as amazing as when you gave me your Dawnblade. I felt your Light scatter the Darkness holding me. I'm sorry I cried, but it was so ... overwhelming."

Jayesh tilted Phoenix up with one finger under the ghost's shell. The nimbus of Light vanished. "You're my ghost," Jayesh told him. "How could I not? I love you, little light. Now eyes up, or I'm going to think you're leading up to a marriage proposal."

Phoenix laughed. "I think Kari might object."

"Damn right, I would," Kari said from behind them.

Jayesh turned with sudden joy in his heart. "Kari! Are you all right?"

She hugged him tightly for a long moment. He held her, feeling a tense place relax inside him. She was here. She'd made it through the Traveler's trial.

"I think I will be, now," she murmured. She bumped her helmet against his, which was the closest they could get to a kiss in their environment gear.

"What happened to you?" Jayesh said. "I fought a blight that was taking my tree."

Kari sat on a boulder. "I fought two Taken wizards for mine. Touch and go. Thought I wouldn't make it. Pulled off an amazing Stormcaller attack and flattened them at the end."

Jayesh sat beside her and put an arm around her waist. "They didn't get Neko, did they?"

Kari held out a hand and summoned her ghost. Neko's blue shell was smudged and dirty, and he blinked at them wearily. "I'm not hurt."

Phoenix appeared over Jayesh's shoulder. "Me neither, but I don't want to do that again any time soon."

Both ghosts vanished. The Guardians sat there for a few minutes. Jayesh glanced around uneasily. "Have you seen Nell?"

"No." Kari straightened, scanning up and down the hillside. "You don't think her trial was too much for her, do you?"

"I hope not." Jayesh hesitated. "Did you get a seed?"

"I did," Kari said in relief. "I was afraid maybe you hadn't gotten one. Did you use it?"

"Yes, it's some kind of super healing rift."

Kari nodded. "That suits you. I got a laser I shoot out of my hands." She held up one palm and pretended to blast things. "Pew pew pew."

"We'll be unstoppable in a fight," Jayesh said. He wanted to bring up the other things the Traveler had said, about his wife being as important as his ghost, but now didn't seem to be the right time.

Footsteps scraped on stone. They looked up to see Nell creeping among the rocks, a knife in one hand. When she saw them, she sighed in relief and sheathed her knife. "Oh, thank the Light, I'm back." She joined them on the rock. "One of those star trees was mine, but the Taken were chewing it down like beavers. I used every single bullet I had on me. Then I fought them hand to hand. Have you ever touched a Taken? They jiggle. Like gelatin."

Jayesh shuddered.

Kari said, "Can't say I've ever had the pleasure."

Nell looked at her gloves. "They burned me." She wiped her hands on her pants. "I keep feeling them. Gross. But the Traveler gave me this light seed thing, and Hadrian says I'll get more awesome knives made of Light."

"Hard fight?" Kari asked.

Nell nodded emphatically. "I don't want to see Taken again for a long time. And I'm going to sleep all the way back to the Reef."

Jayesh rose to his feet. "Me too. Let's get going. Can't let Madrid have all the fun without us."

The thought of Madrid made him uneasy. The hunter needed this extra Light, too. If they could barely hope to face Uldren with it, how would Madrid fare without it?


	10. The Mindbender

The three Guardians flew on autopilot most of the way back to the Reef, sleeping or resting as much as they could. The experience on Io was so deeply personal for each of them that it took a long time to be able to talk about it. When they did talk, it was about other things - how the Tower was faring, how much glimmer they'd made, upgrades for weapons and ghosts.

Nell rode in Kari's ship with Hadrian snuggled in the crook of her arm, wrapped in a corner of her cloak. Every so often she smiled down at him. He emoted a smile back. She slept, awoke, checked him, and slept again. Happiness radiated from him, and it comforted her.

As they neared the Reef, she thought to him, "You're sure cheerful."

"Talking to the Traveler does that," Hadrian replied. "All along, I've thought I was some kind of abomination. But the Traveler didn't care. It called me child of its heart. You have no idea what that means to me."

Nell lifted him and kissed his shell. "I think I do."

He brushed her face with a healing beam, a feather-light touch like a kiss. "My kind, sweet Guardian. Thanks for putting up with me."

She nestled him back in her arms. "My pleasure, Hadrian."

Kari slept a lot, too, with Neko in her lap. He slept there like a cat, his slight weight comforting. Often she would startle awake and one hand would find him. Then she dozed again, reassured that she hadn't lost him, he was still with her.

"The wizards didn't take me," he murmured sleepily to her. "I'm all right. So are you."

"I need you," she whispered. "And I need Jayesh."

Fighting alone, without a team and her husband, had been unexpectedly terrifying. So had the Traveler's words about Jayesh being as important to her as her ghost, and how if he was to develop into the man he was supposed to be, she would have to stop leading him, and let him lead her. This grated against Kari's every instinct as a Guardian and a woman. But at the same time, she desperately wanted Jayesh, wanted his love and presence, wanted his voice and quiet wisdom.

Reconciling the rebellion against his leadership and her hopeless love for him was monstrously difficult. Instead, she slept.

Jayesh, alone in his smaller ship, had nightmares about being Taken. Phoenix kept waking him up, helping him escape for a moment. But Jayesh was so exhausted, he soon slept again, and the nightmares returned.

"I thought you were over this," Phoenix remarked, studying his Guardian after awakening him yet again.

"I thought I was, too," Jayesh muttered. "After last time, when the Maw almost got me, I thought nothing could terrify me like that again. But it almost got my tree and your flower. I keep dreaming I'm back there, and the blight is consuming us, and I can't do anything but watch." He gazed out the windshield at Kari's ship, so near, yet so far away. "I think I'd sleep better if Kari was here."

But she wasn't, so he fought the nightmares all the way back to the Reef.

* * *

Madrid's ship was still anchored in its place in the rough, broken asteroid plain of the Tangled Shore. But Madrid, himself, was nowhere to be found. Their ghosts couldn't even detect Rose.

"You don't think he's dead, do you?" Jayesh said over the radio as they rode their sparrows to check in with Spider.

"I don't know," Kari replied. "Spider might know if he is. Or one of the other Guardian teams."

Spider welcomed them back, still sitting in his scrap metal throne as if he had never left. "My friends!" he said, spreading all four arms. "So glad you've returned. You come back stronger and wiser, eh? Ready to fight on?"

"Yes sir," Jayesh said. "We're also looking for Madrid, our Awoken Hunter friend."

"Ah, the one with the pretty ghost," Spider said. "He took the bounty on Mindbender yesterday. Hasn't come back. Bad news, eh? Guardians haven't fared well against Mindbender. Hiraks the Brain, they used to call him. Fallen obsessed with the Hive. Wants his own throne world, eh? What they call an Ascendant. Out there in that crashed tombship from Saturn. No Hive here until then. Hiraks got himself a brood queen, been breeding Fallen Hive. What got him locked up. Foul creature. Killing him is doing the universe a favor, eh?"

All three Guardians twitched. "That ... is one of the sickest things I've ever heard," Kari said. "How do Hive and Fallen interbreed? Aren't they separate species?"

"Probably their foul magic," Spider replied. "Still look like Hive to me. I don't pry into Hive matters. Just want them dead, eh?"

"Right," Jayesh said. "So, why is he called the Mindbender?"

Spider gave a wheezing laugh. "Bends minds, eh? Unravels them. Spins you out across the ascendant planes, puts you back together how he wants you. Bad for Awoken. Not sure if he's managed to do it to a Guardian yet."

Madrid's absence seemed to grow very heavy.

"Why don't you write that bounty down," Jayesh said, "and we'll see how we fare against this Mindbender."

A few minutes later, the two warlocks and hunter were back outside, gazing at Spider's Eliksni as they rebuilt Thieves Landing.

"I thought the Hangman was sick," Nell said. "Why is it that every single one of these Cayde-killers are depraved whack-jobs?"

"There's a reason they were in prison," Kari replied. "Neko, where's this crashed Hive ship?"

Neko displayed a map of the area, highlighting an area sunward, where the remains of a ship lay on top of the Reef, instead of being built into it.

Kari squinted. "Does that look like a piece of the Dreadnaught to anybody else?"

Jayesh and Nell looked.

"Looks awfully complete," Jayesh observed. "Spider called it a tombship."

"What's a Dreadnaught?" Nell asked.

Kari told her the story of the Hive flagship and the horrors it contained during their sparrow ride out to the crash site. By the time the ruins came into sight, Jayesh had grave doubts about whether they could accomplish this mission at all.

The ruined ship had cracked into immense fragments on impact, its towering ribs arching over them against the sky. It was made of black metal overlaid with geometric shapes. Scavengers had torn apart sections and reassembled them into walkways over chasms in the uneven ground.

Another Guardian team battled ahead of them in the distance, leaving behind a trail of dead Hive thralls. Jayesh stopped to examine one. The worm had crawled out of its chest and died, leaving the body a rapidly withering husk stretched over a skeleton.

"Looks pure Hive to me," he remarked, backing away.

"Fallen don't get their second pair of arms until they've ascended ranks," Hadrian said, floating close to Nell's left ear. "In humans, that would count as legal adulthood."

"What you're saying," Kari said, "is that we should check Hive knights and Wizards for extra arms?"

"Those kind are older," Hadrian said. As if suddenly realizing he was the center of attention, he disappeared in a swirl of light particles.

"You know," Kari said, "I don't think I care that much. I want them all dead."

Jayesh's ghost popped into view, his red and yellow shell gleaming brightly. "Hey ... I'm picking up Rose's signal." He spun in a circle, trying to pinpoint it. "Do you guys hear it? I can barely track it."

Neko and Hadrian appeared, too. Their Guardians waited in suspense, watching as their ghosts scanned.

"I can't get a lock," Neko said. "They're either underground or in that ship somewhere."

They all looked at the biggest piece of the ship looming to their right like a great cracked metal building.

"Sure, looks fun in there," Nell said. "Why not?"

"Rose being alive is a good sign," Kari said. "I'll take point. You ghosts lie low."

The three robots vanished. The Guardians lifted their weapons and cautiously approached the ruins.

Disconcertingly, orange lights glowed dimly far back inside. As they picked their way into the most likely-looking entrance, their feet squelched in the Hive filth that filled their lairs - shed carapace, droppings, bones, rotting carcasses, and the occasional larvae. The glow came from a series of crystals where the Hive stored energy - orange, in this case.

Kari didn't look at them. Her previous husband had been drained and his Light captured in a purple crystal for easy Hive consumption. She had shattered his crystal herself. As they crept deeper into the ship, she became hyper aware of Jayesh's position, and a ferocious protectiveness reared its head within her. She'd lost Rem to the Hive, but she wouldn't lose Jay.

Something snarled up ahead, unfolding themselves from the piled filth. Hive thralls ran toward them on all fours, eyeless, their faces nothing but teeth.

Kari blasted three of the aliens, and her teammates shot four more. They pressed on in grim silence, leaving the corpses to join the piles of decay on the floor.

"Rose's signal is getting stronger," Phoenix told them. "We're going the right way."

"This place is gross," Nell muttered. "I know I'm wearing a helmet, but I don't want to open my mouth or I might taste it."

"Don't," Jayesh said. "You're making me gag."

They rounded a corner and almost stepped in a nest of thralls. The aliens leaped up with shrieks and snarls, clawing and biting. The Guardians shot the ones they could and fought the rest hand to hand.

When the last thrall had been destroyed, Nell said, "I've decided that I don't like Hive."

"Join the club," Kari said, pressing on.

"It's a large club," Jayesh added. "All the Guardians are in it."

"Except Toland," Kari said. "Traitor Guardian who didn't quite die and wants his own throne world."

"Why would anyone want this?" Nell said, gesturing at a huge worm slithering through a pile of nameless refuse against the wall.

"As best as I understand," Jayesh said, "it works like this."

More thralls and a Knight attacked them, the Knight swinging a bone sword with a deadly sharp edge.

Jayesh talked and fought at the same time. "The Hive religion is the Sword Logic. Kill and grow stronger. They pass some of the power from every kill higher up the food chain. The guys at the top get all that power. The ascendants and gods and such." He blasted the Knight with a handful of fire and got thrown into the wall for his troubles. "And so," he gasped, "the top guys make ... their own worlds. With no Hive crap in them."

Nell threw a knife that embedded itself in the Knight's neck just as Kari roasted it with lightning. The Knight collapsed with a string of guttural sounds like curses.

"You're telling me," Nell said, retrieving her knife, "that the Hive operate on a pyramid scheme?"

"Yep," Kari said shortly, helping Jayesh to his feet. He held her hand a fraction of a second longer than necessary as they studied each other's faces through their helmet visors.

_Are you all right?_ his expression asked.

Kari nodded and forced a smile.

He patted her shoulder comfortingly and lifted his pulse rifle.

Nell watched them and gave an exaggerated sigh. "You two are so cute."

"What?" Jayesh said, grinning. "You didn't see anything."

"Always looking after each other like that," Nell replied. "Just like a sitcom."

"Hear that, Jayesh?" Kari said. "We're sappy as one of those terrible Golden Age videos."

"Not everything was golden in the Golden Age," Jayesh agreed. "Let's get out of here. Phoenix, you still tracking Rose?"

"She's very close," Phoenix replied. "Down that left-hand tunnel, I think."

With Kari again in the lead, the fireteam followed the signal. As they drew closer, they began to hear snatches of Rose's voice over their radios.

"They can't do this ... get up, get up ... Traveler, send help, I can't ... Madrid! Please don't!"

"Rose?" Kari called. "Madrid? Can you hear us?"

"Kari?" Rose exclaimed. "Did you bring the whole fireteam? Please say you did."

They rounded a corner and entered a huge room with only a little sludge in the corners. The walls were black metal, with pillars cut in harsh geometric lines, stately and imposing. Jayesh had the distinct impression he'd walked into a bank.

A gang of Hive acolytes leaped out from behind the pillars and showered the team with burning plasma bolts. The team scattered for cover, returning fire, the chatter of their weapons echoing off the metal walls in an ear-splitting cacophony.

The acolytes put up a good fight, but eventually the Guardians cleaned them all out. As they emerged from cover, panting and looking for further enemies, Rose said, "Can - can one of you help me?"

They looked around and saw Rose lying on the corner of a pillar buttress ten feet from the ground. Her golden wire shell was crushed out of shape, and her blue eye flickered.

There was no sign of Madrid.

Jayesh leaped and flew through the air in a warlock glide, scooped the ghost up, and floated to the floor. "Rose," he murmured as Kari and Nell gathered around him. "What happened to you?"

"That Mindbender guy," Rose replied. "He started singing one of those awful Hive songs. Not a deathsong. One of the control ones, I think. Madrid couldn't fight it. He lured Madrid through that portal over there. But before Madrid crossed over, he knocked me away. I think it was to save me. But he did it so hard that I hit this pillar. I've been here ever since."

Their three ghosts converged on Rose and poured healing Light into her, mending her core and components. After a moment she floated into the air, a little off balance because of her dented shell.

"Madrid's still alive," she said with conviction. "But the Mindbender is hurting him." She phased from sight, followed by her brother ghosts. "The portal's still open at the far end of the room."

The team crossed the long, narrow room, straining to see through the gloom. At the far end was a dais three steps high. Above it, a black portal shimmered and wavered, creepily similar to the way a Taken moved.

Jayesh halted. "We have to go through that?"

"It's a gate to the Ascendant Realm," Kari said. "Keep your wits about you, you two. This is another dimension, and the beings who live there can change it at any time to suit them. Regular people die and Guardians go mad."

"Is there Light?" Jayesh asked in a small voice.

Kari shook her head. "Only what you take with you."

Jayesh tightened his grip on his rifle.

Nell lifted her hand cannon. "An evil dimension of insanity, check. Madrid's prisoner in there, check. The alien in there killed my Vanguard, check. Let's kill him back."

Without waiting for Kari, Nell leaped up the steps and vanished into the portal. Alarmed, Kari and Jayesh sprang after her.

Reality whooshed around them, dragging at their flesh, as if reluctant to let them through. They landed in a vast space with something like lightning flickering in the distance. The floor underfoot was solid enough, made of what resembled stone blocks slotted together in random geometric shapes. Pillars ringed the space, apparently made to support a roof that didn't exist yet. Black fog drifted across the space, but Jayesh glimpsed a huge throne on the far side. A being was seated on this throne, and a single figure bowed before it, huddled on his knees.

"Madrid," Rose whispered. "What's he done to him?"

Nell sprinted across the throne room-world, pistol held high. Kari and Jayesh followed.

Kari didn't mind what her senses told her were in this throne world. Pillars, floor, fog, lightning, all that existed in reality. It was what her senses weren't telling her that bothered her. The sense of infinity, that if she stepped off this tiny platform, she would fall through nothing until she died of starvation - or something devoured her. The distant not-lightning illuminated constantly changing shapes that she was careful not to look at too closely. In the back of her mind, she worried about how the Ascendant Plane would affect Jayesh.

As they neared the being on the throne, he rose to his feet and extended a hand toward them. He was a sixteen-foot Fallen, but he had clothed himself in Hive chitin until he resembled one of their wizards. His four eyes glowed with malice. Instead of speaking to them, he sang.

His voice was deep and clear, melodic as a bell. The song was in a minor key, tragic and stirring at once.

Kari shouted across it, "Madrid!"

The hunter crouched on the ground, arms wrapped around his helmet, trying to shut out the sound.

But the Mindbender stepped between the Guardians and their companion, hand still upraised. His song took on a commanding tone.

Kari, Jayesh and Nell slowed to a halt. Kari fought to aim her submachine gun at the alien, but her arms wouldn't work. The barrel stayed aimed at the floor as if pulled by a magnet. The music burned into her brain, compelling, all-important.

"Kari, fight it!" Neko cried. "Don't listen!"

Nearby, Jayesh struggled the same way, shaking his head and fighting to raise his rifle. But the Hive magic was too strong, here on the Ascendant Plane, where the Mindbender ruled as a god. Worse, there was no Light to reach for. Only the void of outer darkness.

Nell stood stock still, as if the music had already subdued her. Her pistol and knife dangled at her sides, and she stared at the alien as if hypnotized.

The Mindbender smiled as he sang. He reached into his robe and produced a long, jagged sword of black metal. He focused on Kari and swirled the blade in circles, pointing at her heart.

"Kari, he's summoning me," Neko gasped. "Don't let him, please! Please!"

Kari tried to struggle, tried to resist the song, but her brain was full of it. She couldn't remember how to fight.

A shimmer of blue particles began to swirl at the end of the sword, dragging Neko out of phase. One quick thrust of that blade and he would die ... and then so would Kari.

Suddenly Nell bellowed, "ON TOP OF THE TOWER, ALL COVERED WITH BLOOD, I SHOT ME A FALLEN WITH A FORTY-FOUR SLUG!"

Her voice was so tremendously off-key, the song so irreverent, that the Guardians woke up a little. Kari mentally yanked Neko away from the sword. The blue particles vanished. The Mindbender glared at Nell, increasing his volume. The song beat into Kari's head.

But Nell wasn't finished. "I WENT TO HIS FUNERAL! I WENT TO HIS GRAVE! BUT INSTEAD OF FLOWERS, I THREW A GRENADE!"

And she threw one at the Mindbender.

The alien's song faltered. He leaped to one side, but the grenade caught on the hem of his robe and exploded.

The three Guardians spun away from the explosion, the song driven out of their heads by the concussion. Madrid went tumbling against the foot of the throne, where he slowly sat up, still clutching his head.

The Mindbender struggled to his feet, limping badly, trailing blood and corrupted ether from beneath his robes. Panting, he snarled at his enemies and began a new song - a dragging, forbidding song that seemed to reach inside them and tear at their souls.

"Deathsong!" Phoenix cried. "Don't listen!"

"Hadrian!" Nell yelled, "play Dragonforce!"

The opening strains of Through the Fire and the Flames blasted across their radios at full volume, drowning out the deathsong and all communication.

Kari lifted her submachine gun and blew chunks of chitin armor off the Mindbender, interrupting his singing. He pulled a huge rifle from beneath his robes and returned fire, no longer trying to sing.

Jayesh was laughing, although nobody could hear him over the blast of speed metal. He drew on his new super power, produced a fiery sword from nowhere, and slammed it into the stone floor.

Light exploded into being in that dark place, burning from a wide circle on the ground. The fiery sword blazed in the center like a beacon of life. Long ribbons of Light radiated out from it to empower each Guardian who stepped into the circle.

Jayesh raised his pulse rifle and hammered the Mindbender. The alien hit him with blast after blast from the huge rifle, but each shot dissipated as it reached the warlock, absorbed by the Light sword.

Kari and Nell ran to Madrid, grabbed his arms, and pulled him toward the circle. He stumbled with them, still covering his head, his legs barely able to hold him. Once he crossed into the circle, a beam of Light touched him. He slowly stood up, his strength seeming to return. He turned to face the Mindbender, drew his scout rifle, and aimed carefully at the alien's eyes.

The high-caliber bullet tore through the Mindbender's head in a gust of ether. The alien jerked, the eyes darkening, and collapsed to the floor.

At once, the throne world roared with terrible wind that scrubbed away the stones and pillars, blurring them sideways.

Hadrian shut off the music. "This world is destabilizing! Get to the portal!"

Jayesh's healing circle vanished. They turned to Madrid, reaching out to help, but he waved them off. "I'm fine! Let's go!"

The four ran back across the dissolving pavement toward the black, wavering portal. The ground sucked at their legs like mud, trying to slow them down. More un-light flashed across the sky, illuminating enormous shapes creeping toward them.

They piled through the portal just as the throne world spiraled into the nether with a rending shriek. Something snapped shut behind them - jaws that were not jaws.

Then they were on the other side, back in the wrecked Hive ship, which felt astonishingly safe and normal.

The four stood there, breathing heavily, not speaking. Finally, Nell held up a piece of broken chitin a foot long. "I tried to grab the helmet, but it fell to pieces. This was all I saved."

"It'll work," Madrid said. He slung his scout rifle over one shoulder and summoned Rose. She appeared over his cupped hands and gazed up at him through her dented shell. Madrid ran his fingers over the dent, slowly and regretfully. Then he began bending the wire back in place.

"What happened?" Kari asked him.

"Got me with a damn song," Madrid said. "I had just enough brain left to leave Rose here. Hit her harder than I meant to." His voice dropped. "I'm so sorry."

"It's all right, love," she whispered.

His team watched him repair his ghost, awkwardly wondering what to say.

"What was he doing to you?" Jayesh ventured. "He had you all ... curled up."

"Trying to take over my mind," Madrid said shortly. "Nearly pulled it off, too. I fought him for every inch and he still almost got my spark. If he'd killed Rose like he wanted, I'd have had no defense at all." He spoke to his ghost again. "I felt you fighting for me. Giving me Light. Thank you."

She scanned his face. "I wish I could have done more."

He let her float into the air once more, her wire shell mostly back in shape. He looked at his fireteam. "And thank you for coming back. I honestly didn't think you would." He set off into the Hive ship without another word, and they followed him.


	11. Voices

Although the fireteam heard thralls screeching somewhere in the ship's halls, they encountered none on their way out. Then they summoned their sparrows and flew back to Spider.

Spider inspected the chitin fragment very carefully before agreeing to pay them the bounty. "Never know when it might be faked, eh? Hive chitin is easy to come by. But the House of Scorn mark is right here, so it's easy to guess who this belonged to. None of the other Barons wear Hive mess." He laughed and dug glimmer out of a chest, carefully counting the glowing cubes into their hands. "Glad you made it back, Madrid. If you didn't, I was hoping to add your ghost's shell to my collection. Such a pretty thing she is."

Madrid said nothing, but his movements turned slow and careful, as if he was working to hold himself back from punching the Eliksni in the face.

The sun was sinking rapidly as they returned to their ships for the night. As Madrid peeled off to go to his ship, he said, "Be ready at dawn tomorrow. We're after Fikrul, and Uldren won't be far behind."

"Are ... are you sure you'll be up to it?" Kari asked.

"I'm fine," Madrid snapped. "The healing circle fixed everything."

Jayesh, Kari, and Nell boarded Kari's ship in silence. It was a relief to pull off helmets and gloves and see each other's faces.

"He's not fine," Jayesh said.

"I know," Kari replied. "But what can we do? We're not his babysitters."

Nell threw herself onto a galley bench and began unfastening her boots. "Madrid hasn't been fine since Cayde died, you guys. And he probably won't be even after we kill Uldren."

"That's what I'm worried about," Kari muttered.

They ate cold rations and hot tea for dinner. As they did, Jayesh said, "Nell, where did you find that music?"

Nell blushed. "I was digging through the Golden Age records one night, looking for something good to listen to. And I found this new category the Cryptarchs had labeled 'speed metal'. It only had one album in it, and I loved it. I've been listening to it on loop. Hadrian keeps it loaded for when we're on boring solo missions."

Jayesh nodded with a grin. "Great idea, drowning out the deathsong. Don't we have to hear the song for it to work?"

"That's the theory," Kari said. "Nobody's ever survived a deathsong. Good thing we didn't let the Mindbender finish."

Jayesh and Kari gazed at each other, then Jayesh put an arm around her shoulders. "That was too close," he murmured.

"It was," she whispered. "I could have lost you the way I lost Rem." They gazed into each other's eyes.

Nell stood up abruptly. "Well, I guess I'll go ... place. Come on, Hadrian." She went off to her bunk, leaving the couple alone.

Jayesh kissed Kari's temple. "As missions go, it was pretty straightforward. Walk in, shoot a target, walk out. Just ... this time was more musical than normal."

Kari kissed him and ran her hands through his hair. "You would put it like that."

He smiled. "It was nothing compared to watching a representation of my soul and ghost be corrupted and devoured by a blight."

Kari hugged him. "Oh Jay ... we haven't even had a chance to talk about that. You used your new power, though."

"I did." He nodded pensively. "The seed made my Light beautiful. Even in the Ascendant Realm, where everything is hideous, my healing sword was amazing. I think it'll only get stronger."

"I haven't used mine yet," Kari murmured. "But I will."

Jayesh sat there for a moment, rubbing her shoulder and staring into space. "The Traveler ... uh ... I guess he gave me marriage advice."

Kari straightened and studied him. "It did me, too. What'd it tell you?"

Jayesh swallowed, embarrassed. "Well, it ... basically told me to defend you the way I defend my ghost. Because our Light is combined. And ... not to neglect our relationship, because it's our own Garden of Light."

For some reason, this brought tears to Kari's eyes. "That's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. It told me ... well, it wasn't as nice."

It was Jayesh's turn to sit up straighter. "What?"

Kari wiped her eyes and wished she didn't feel so stupidly angry at the Traveler. "It told me that ... if I want you to become a leader ... I have to stop leading you."

Jayesh frowned in confusion. "Like ... taking point in firefights?"

"No ... like making all the decisions in our marriage."

Jayesh sat there in silence for a long moment, considering this. "I don't really know what the Traveler meant. I don't mind you doing all the things you do. Managing our affairs and so on."

Kari folded her arms and sat back in the bench. "The Traveler's just a big computer, anyway. What's it know about human relationships?"

Jayesh gazed at her for a long moment, then sighed. "I wish I knew how much it knows. I do know that I'm going to do what it told me. Care for you the way I do Phoenix. Invest in our marriage. You're worth it to me."

And there he went, melting her heart again. Kari sat up and kissed him tenderly for a while. But inside, she chewed on the Traveler's instructions to her and what it might cost to obey.

After a while, they leaned back in the seat, cuddled together.

"Fikrul and Uldren," Jayesh groaned, leaning his head against the wall. "We'll take them out and be done with this revenge mission. Kari, I'm so tired of it. I'm a Guardian, not a hired gun. I want to go home."

"Me too," Kari said. "I know Uldren murdered Cayde. But like you said, Cayde was only the beginning. I keep thinking we're being played, but I don't know who's doing it. The Traveler?"

Jayesh thought about this. "The Traveler has done its best to equip us for what's coming. It keeps talking about the coming disaster and implying that we might not survive. If it's playing us, at least it's being honest. It's the other side I can't figure out. Is Uldren the ultimate evil we've been hunting?"

"I don't know," Kari said. "Mara Sov is dead, right? The Awoken Queen?"

Jayesh shrugged. "From what I've read, they never found a body ... but she may have been Taken with the rest."

"Uldren is her brother," Kari pointed out. "Maybe they're in this together, some evil scheme to ... I don't know. He stole a piece of the Traveler, which still makes no sense."

Jayesh rubbed his eyes. "I'm too tired to think."

Weariness was creeping up on her. "My brain won't work, either. Let's get some sleep."

They sought out their bunks and went to bed, clasping hands across the aisle for a while. Kari was nearly asleep when Jayesh's whimpering awoke her. Across the narrow aisle, he was tossing and thrashing in his sleep, in the throes of a nightmare.

She shook him awake, alarmed. He gazed up at her, panting.

"Dreaming about Taken?" she whispered.

He nodded.

Kari slid down to lie beside him in the cramped space, wrapping her arms around him. "I'm here. It's all right now."

He hugged her tightly against him and shuddered. "They were tearing the Light from your eyes. It won't happen. I won't let it."

Kari shivered a little, herself.

The two fell asleep in each other's arms, and slept that way the rest of the night, their mingled Light keeping the nightmares at bay.

* * *

Madrid paced up and down the main hall of his cruiser.

The Mindbender's song still echoed in his head, coaxing, creeping, weakening him. Knowing the alien was dead made no difference. The song was embedded in his neurons. Any time he tried to sleep, the song grew louder and clearer. He found himself curled in the fetal position, clutching his ears.

The evil music was made worse by the whispers. As if the music had opened a gateway, new voices whispered in his mind.

"There is no Light for you anymore." That was Jayesh.

Kari seemed to say, "What a great Hunter you were, Madrid. But all along, you served the Darkness. You're Awoken. It's inevitable."

He thought Rose, his ghost, said, "You really are a murderer. You enjoyed killing those Barons the way they enjoyed Cayde's death."

"No!" he roared, pounding his fists on the walls. "Shut up! I don't have to listen to you!"

The shadows in the corners of the ship seemed to darken, creeping toward him like crawling Taken. The control song in his mind strengthened.

Madrid drew his sidearm and aimed it at the shadows. "Stay the hell off my ship." He squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flash erased the shadows for an instant, then the small-caliber bullet ricocheted off a bulkhead and hit him in the hip. He grunted, the pain silencing the voices and music.

"Rose!"

She didn't appear.

He leaned against the wall, holding the hole in his hip as blood welled through his pants and fingers. "Rosie, come out. I need you."

She was nearby - he could feel her. But still, she remained hidden in phase.

A cruel voice, like one of the Scorn, whispered in his head, "Even your ghost has abandoned you. You are nothing - nothing. But together, we might have worth."

He snarled and clutched his head, digging bloodied fingers into his scalp. "Shut up! I don't want your cursed bargains! Leave me alone!"

He slid down the wall to sit on the floor, his leg threatening to give out. "Rose," he called hoarsely. "Please, come here."

Her voice - what he hoped was her voice - said in his head, "Love, you just attacked the wall and accidentally shot yourself while yelling at voices. You're still holding your sidearm. Are you going to shoot me?"

Madrid holstered his sidearm, wincing at the effort. "I'm hearing the Mindbender's song and it's making me crazy. I won't hurt you, love."

Rose phased into sight near the ceiling, partially hidden by a loop of cables. She peered around it at him.

His own ghost was afraid of him. Madrid's heart unexpectedly hurt.

They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Rose ventured out from behind the cables. "I can heal your wound. And ... I may be able to help your mind. But it won't be easy."

"Can you stop the music and the voices?" Madrid asked, feeling like a child begging a parent to make the monsters go away.

"I can try," Rose said. She flew down and shone a healing beam on his hip, mending the wound and coaxing his flesh to expel the bullet. Once he was healed, she scanned his face. He gazed into her beam, knowing she had to analyze his eyes.

"I may have to tamper with your brain," Rose said apologetically. "Normally, that's something we ghosts promise never to do."

"Will it stop the voices?"

She flew back and forth in front of him, scanning his head. Then she floated in front of him, uncertain. "I can't properly touch your spark. I think the corruption is coming from there, not your mind."

"My spark is corrupt?" Madrid said. "The voices keep saying that ..."

"No, it's not," Rose reassured him. "Your spark is fine ... for now. But you've cut me off from it. I could block the interference if you'd let me back in."

This confused him. "How could I possibly do that? You're bonded to my spark."

Rose started to speak, hesitated, and flew back and forth in the air in a worried sort of way.

"What?" Madrid asked.

"Well," Rose said slowly, "your quest for revenge has blocked me off. It's like a brick wall I can't get through."

Madrid turned his head and stared at the wall.

"See?" Rose said. "You're still cutting me off. I can't help you like this."

He thought of the light leaving Cayde's eyes, watching his beloved Vanguard dying of his wounds on a Light-forsaken prison floor. Madrid had not allowed himself to grieve. Revenge first, grief later. So he channeled his sadness into anger.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Rose said softly.

"No," Madrid said. "Just mess with my brain and make the music stop."

Hesitantly, Rose flew closer and scanned his forehead. Then she flew over him and scanned the top of his head. Madrid waited, wondering what it would feel like.

Suddenly Rose withdrew, shutting off her beam. "I can't do it, love. Your brain's not the problem, and I might cause cascading damage. Just ... take some sleeping pills or something." She disappeared in a swirl of particles.

"Rose!" he bellowed, scrambling to his feet. "Blast you, you good for nothing piece of junk!"

"You don't need her," the voices whispered. "What fellowship has Light with Darkness?"

"Get out of my mind!" he roared, running down the hall. He careened off the back wall, turned and ran the other way. The voices and shadows followed him.

"There is no hope for you, Awoken. You and your people will be consumed. But if you come to us first ... we may be willing to bargain."

Madrid flung open the ship's outer door, leaped out into the freezing cold night, and ran blind into the treacherous landscape of the Tangled Shore.

* * *

The next morning, Kari, Jayesh, and Nell went to Madrid's ship, as was their routine before setting off to talk to Spider. To their dismay, the outer door stood open, and there was no sign of Madrid or Rose.

Kari climbed into the ship and explored it, gun drawn. After a few minutes she returned to her team. "Completely empty. He wasn't hijacked by Scorn." She slid the door closed behind her.

Jayesh pulled out his ghost. "Can you detect Rose?"

Phoenix turned in a circle, scanning. Hadrian and Neko did the same.

"About a mile that way," Phoenix said, indicating the sunrise side. "But there's nothing out there. And Rose isn't talking."

Increasingly mystified, the team summoned their sparrows and flew after Madrid's signal. They slowed as they approached, because the ground was broken into treacherous cracks and gullies. At last they had to dismount and continue on foot.

They found Madrid in the bottom of one of these gullies, dead with his neck broken. Rose hovered above him, her core open, but she hadn't resurrected him.

The team gazed at this strange sight, alarmed and befuddled. There were no aliens nearby, no hazards, no hint as to how he had gotten there. Madrid was so professional and died so seldom, they could only think some foul play was afoot.

Kari jumped down into the gully and summoned Neko. "Rose, what happened?"

The ghost gazed at her, her single eye blinking from her tiny core in the midst of her Light. "Well, I was ... I was letting him sleep."

"By leaving him _dead_?" Nell exclaimed from the gully rim.

Neko opened his core, too, but stopped, looking first at Madrid, then at Rose. "What's happened to his spark?"

"I'm having trouble reaching it," Rose confessed.

Alarmed, Nell and Jayesh leaped down, too, summoning their ghosts. Now four ghosts hovered over Madrid's body, attempting to resurrect him.

"His spark is still there," Phoenix said. "But it's ... what is this thing encasing it?"

"I can't break through," Neko said, circling. "Rose, how long has he been like this?"

"Since Cayde died," she said.

The ghosts looked at their Guardians for a second.

Jayesh ventured, "Is he ... dead for good, then?"

Nobody answered. The ghosts resumed studying Madrid's spark.

Suddenly Hadrian exclaimed, "It's dark ether!"

"Around his spark?" Phoenix said.

"Yes!" Hadrian flew to Madrid's chest. "Rose, help me. We have to purge him before we can raise him."

Rose flew down and scanned her Guardian. "How are you able to detect that? It's like a millionth of a percentage. It could be clinging to his gear."

"I'm part Servitor," Hadrian said. "I know ether. And that dark ether bothers me worse than any of you. The Mindbender must have made him breathe some."

Neko and Phoenix flew closer, trying to pick up a reading.

"I don't detect anything," Phoenix said.

"Maybe I do?" Neko said. "It's extremely faint."

"All together, now," Hadrian said. "Pool your heal beams, head to foot. Go!"

All four ghosts poured healing Light into Madrid's corpse. The combined beams were so bright that their Guardians had to shield their eyes.

Madrid's neck straightened, his head moving in a creepily alive way. A trickle of purple smoke leaked out of his mouth and trailed onto the ground, where it disappeared. His spark lost some of the sheath around it, and the ghosts felt it.

"That didn't fix it," Hadrian said in disbelief. "Why didn't that fix it?"

"He's angry," Rose said. "He hasn't grieved properly."

The Guardians and ghosts gazed at their friend in sudden understanding.

"Let's get him up," Rose said.

The four ghosts poured Light into Madrid. Flickers of Light swirled through his blue skin, and his yellow eyes fluttered open. He lay there a moment, looking at the four ghosts floating above him. Then he sat up and surveyed his fireteam, rubbing his newly-healed neck.

"Did you breathe corrupted ether, by any chance?" Kari asked.

Madrid sat there for a long moment without answering. He folded his arms across his knees. "Yes, I think I might have." He held out a hand, and Rose flew to him. "It's gone quiet, love. What did you do?"

"Hadrian detected a tiny amount of ether interfering with your spark," Rose told him. "It took all of us to purge it."

Madrid sat there a moment longer, just looking at his ghost. Then he dismissed her and climbed to his feet. "Guess we'd better get to Spider's."

As he summoned his sparrow, Jayesh said, "How did you get out here? The door was open on your ship, even."

Madrid mounted the sparrow. "I had a bad night." Then he rocketed away without another word.

The rest of the team followed him, increasingly worried about his stability.


	12. The Watchtower

"Ah yes, Fikrul and Uldren," Spider said, folding two of his four hands across his paunch. His other two hands held another ghost shell - an expensive pyramid-shaped one - and twirled the segments. "Bad business, they are. Uldren's ship arrived last night. My spies saw him and Fikrul break into the Watchtower, at the far end of the Tangled Shore. You've seen it, eh? Big, fancy tower?"

The four Guardians nodded.

Spider grunted. "Fikrul's what they call the Fanatic. Teaches that Eliksni owe nothing to our machines. They're better off drinking the dark ether and being resurrected as Scorn. Damn necromancer. He's the last Baron, and he's the most loyal to Uldren. Cut off the head of the warpserpent, the body dies, eh?"

"We may wind up fighting them at the same time," Jayesh muttered. "What do you know about Uldren Sov?"

Spider laughed wheezily. "More like, what do I _not_ know about Uldren Sov. Where to start, where to start. Queen's brother. Used to be head of her intelligence network. Hates Guardians. Hates Earthborn Awoken. Hates most things but his sister. Arrogant. Got himself entangled with the Black Garden, never quite the same afterward. Disappeared after Oryx blasted the Reef. We thought he was dead. Turns out he was building the Scorn, gathering the Barons. Wound up in the Prison of Elders, but Fikrul helped them plot their jailbreak. My spies say he plans to wipe out the Awoken people. Why, we can't tell. The man's mad."

"How does he fight?" Kari asked.

"Dirty," Spider replied. "Expect trip mines, traps, ether being dumped on your head. If he breaches the security in the Watchtower, he'll open the gates to the Dreaming City. Home of the Awoken. Secret. Stop him, if you can. I'll pay a bounty for Fikrul. But Uldren ... I won't pay for him. He's Awoken business."

Madrid lifted his rifle. "I'd say he's my business."

Spider gazed at him a long moment, taking in the glowing yellow eyes inside the helmet and the Hunter garb. "I'd say he is," Spider said slowly. "Whether he dies or you die, I absolve myself. Eh? Mara Sov turns up and demands to know who killed her brother, I can say it wasn't me."

"Fine," Madrid said. "How do we enter the Watchtower?"

A voice said behind them, "Leave that to me."

The Guardians parted ranks to let Petra Venj through. The Awoken woman looked the same as last time - no enviro gear, no helmet, her red hair brushed across her face to conceal her eyepatch.

"Uldren's back," she told the room.

"Yes, I know," Spider replied. "These Guardians are being hired to hunt Fikrul. If they happen across Uldren, who can say what might happen?"

"Very sly, Spider," Petra said. She turned to the fireteam. "I know the Watchtower's access codes. I'll get us inside. Beyond that, strange things have been happening there, even before Uldren returned. I fear for the future of my people."

"What kind of things?" Jayesh asked.

Petra fixed her glowing eyes on him. "Dark things."

Jayesh carefully didn't react.

"Nice to have you on the job, Petra," Spider said. "Maybe have a drink with old Spider afterward, eh?"

Petra graced him with a belligerent stare. "I doubt I'll have time for that, however this falls out. You got your Shore back. Remember your pledge to the Queen. That's all you must do."

Spider raised one hand. "Eh, I remember. Go off and avenge your comrade. Remember, though. There is no comfort in revenge."

"Maybe for you," Petra said, with a pointed look at the wall of slain Baron trophies.

"That wasn't revenge," Spider said, catching the look. "That was business."

Petra smiled briefly. "Let's go, then. Guardians, you're going to catch Uldren for me."

The fireteam followed her, Madrid eagerly, the others with uneasy reserve.

* * *

The Watchtower was a smooth stone tower the size of a fifty-story skyscraper. The only windows were a series of arches on the top floor. The whole building seemed to stand by itself in the middle of a plain.

"How is this place a gate to a city?" Nell asked as the team parked their sparrows in the tower's shadow.

Petra smiled. "There's more than one kind of gate, Guardian. Secrets of the Awoken people lie deep within this tower. You will be the first outsiders to see them. If Uldren hasn't destroyed them by now."

She climbed a wide staircase leading to the tower's immense vaulted gates. The Guardians followed at a respectful distance. When Petra reached the gates, she made a complex series of hand motions. A woven pattern on the gates flashed blue, then they slowly swung open.

"I thought Uldren broke in," Madrid said.

"He did," Petra said, fingering one of the doors. "Half the pattern here is shattered. I'm surprised it responded to me at all."

The five entered the Watchtower. The entrance hall was high and quiet, lit a dim blue, supported by stone pillars engraved in humanoid shapes with folded arms. A staircase awaited them at the far end.

As soon as Jayesh stepped inside, Darkness clamped over him like a metal lid on a pot. He froze on the threshold, half-expecting to pass out. The corners of his vision darkened, and he struggled to breathe.

"Phoenix," he thought.

"Jay," his ghost whimpered. "This place is evil." His spark touched Jayesh's, adding more Light, trying to shield him from the malevolent presence that crouched so near.

Jayesh's breathing became easier, and his vision cleared. He walked after the others and realized that he'd only hesitated for a second. They must have thought he was admiring the scenery.

"Be careful," he told his team. "Darkness lives in this place."

"I feel it," Kari said grimly.

Nell looked around. "It's not that dark in here."

Madrid said nothing, but shook his head as if a fly was bothering him.

Petra didn't seem to notice. She mounted the stairs two at a time, and the Guardians followed.

The second floor was deserted - more stone floors and dim blue light. But the third floor contained what looked like an old laboratory, with chairs, tables, and a lot of strange machinery made of rotating metal hoops. But it had been destroyed, the tables tossed against the walls, the hoops broken in pieces, chairs shattered on the floor.

Petra paused to look at it, whispering something under her breath. Then she continued upstairs.

"What did this?" Jayesh murmured.

"Petra said three names," Kari said. "I don't know what they meant."

Each floor they passed through now contained the wreckage of whatever had once been here - destroyed machines, burned books, stone patterns defaced and shattered. And Jayesh sensed the Darkness growing closer. It must have occupied the top of the tower.

On the sixteenth floor, Hadrian told the team, "Dark ether. The air above us reeks. We've found the Scorn."

"Fikrul would bring his flunkies," Petra muttered, drawing her sidearm. She gestured for Madrid to take point, which he did, bounding eagerly up the steps.

But instead of instantly attacking, Madrid reached the next doorway, shrank to one side, and pressed himself against the wall, gesturing at his team to do the same. They did, inching close enough to hear.

Voices spoke inside. One was a gravelly, Eliksni voice, while the other was the clear, cold voice of a young man. Fikrul and Uldren.

"Please, master," Fikrul was saying. "Let me carry this burden for you. Beyond this point is only Darkness."

"I fear no Darkness," Uldren replied. "Only I can do this, Fikrul. My sister has asked this of me, and I must ..." He hesitated, as if doubting his own words. "I must do this for her."

"But that thing you carry," Fikrul whined. "It's too much for you."

"I am the Awoken Prince," Uldren snapped. "Nothing is too much for me, understand? Now, prevent those Guardians from following. I must not be disturbed."

"Yes, master," Fikrul said, sounding unhappy.

Jayesh thought to his ghost, "How did he know we were here?"

"Probably our Light," Phoenix replied. "In this dark place, I imagine we shine like stars."

Madrid spun about and aimed his rifle through the doorway. He fired once, then ducked back into the hallway as an arc bolt slashed into the wall opposite. He whipped out of hiding and darted into the room. His team followed. Petra lurked in the rear, letting the Guardians draw fire.

* * *

Fikrul the Fanatic was an Eliksni Archon, a high priest with terrifying powers. He carried a staff, which he spun about, trailing electricity, deflecting bullets and grenades. He ducked for cover behind one of the humanoid pillars and slammed his staff against the floor. Trails of dark ether spread from the point of impact, rising to form the various ranks of Scorn. They hurled themselves at the Guardians.

"My friends are dead, thanks to you," he growled, throwing down a circle crackling with electricity. Two of the Guardians didn't get out of the way in time and writhed in pain. He killed them both with a well-placed arc bolt. Not that it mattered - they'd resurrect in a minute. Infuriating things, Guardians.

"Did you ever learn their names?" he snarled at the surviving two as they ran and hid. "Pirrha? Reksis? Kaniks? Hiraks? Elykris? Yaviks? Araskes?"

One Guardian popped out from behind a pillar, a finger raised. "Actually, we didn't kill those last three."

He drove her back into hiding with a lightning barrage that blackened the pillar that concealed her. "Kill, kill, kill. That's all you Guardians know how to do."

The Guardian who had spoken threw a grenade, forcing him to run for cover, himself. In the interval, the other Guardian had helped resurrect his fallen companions, holding off the Scorn single-handed.

"Wrong!" called the Guardian who had tossed the grenade. "I also know how to make campfires."

"Useless wretch!" This female's flippancy enraged him. "You slaughtered my friends! Many of their bodies are lost and cannot be resurrected!"

"Your friends were all depraved wackjobs," the Guardian said. "No offense, but you could do better." She fired a hand cannon, tearing through Fikrul's lower left arm.

Fikrul cursed in pain and wished fleetingly for a Servitor and its mending ether. But no, Eliksni needed to grow beyond their dependence on such machines. "If you destroy me, I shall rise again by the power granted to me by Lord Uldren!"

"How many pieces do you need to do that?" said the Guardian, darting in and out of hiding. "Like, most of your limbs? Or can you do it with no head? We can make it more difficult."

Fikrul dashed into the open and threw down an arc tether. It sent out a burst of energy that seized enemies by the metal in their armor and dragged them toward itself. Fikrul waited, another lightning circle ready. "I will send you to your eternal deaths."

Two Guardians had retreated out of range, but two others were dragged out of hiding and pulled toward Fikrul's waiting power. As soon as they were within range, he threw down another lightning circle.

One of the Guardians tore out of the tether and leaped almost to the ceiling, floating across the room in a warlock glide. The other fell onto the electrified floor, rolled across it toward him, and stabbed Fikrul in the foot with a knife. It conducted the electricity of his own power straight into his bones. He yelled and leaped backward. The Guardian must have amazing pain tolerance to pull off such an attack. He slashed her with arc bolts and extinguished her life for a moment.

The Guardian who had escaped called, "Do you know why we've come, Fikrul?"

"How dare you defile my name with your filthy tongue," Fikrul spat.

The Guardian stepped out of cover and stood facing him, rifle lowered. Fikrul raised his staff, but hesitated, curious. The other Guardians held their fire, and for a moment, the room fell silent.

"We've come to avenge our Vanguard, Cayde-6," the Guardian said. "Had your leader not destroyed him, we would have left you alone."

"Cayde-6 was responsible for the imprisonment and suffering of my friends and children," Fikrul replied. "So was Petra Venj. And you are Guardians. Your kind has the blood of the Eliksni race on its hands."

The dead Guardian on the floor revived and sat up, groaning. Fikrul struck her down again. "And I will never stop killing you."

"That's why we've come to end you," said the Guardian.

The fight resumed. The twice-dead Guardian was dragged under cover where she revived and rejoined the fight, furious and reckless.

The lightning circle killed Guardians with surprising speed. Fikrul threw down another tether. This time it caught all four Guardians and dragged them out of hiding. Fikrul waited, one hand crackling with lightning.

To his dismay, all four Guardians pivoted toward him in midair, raised their weapons, and fired.

By the time the arc tether had dragged the Guardians together and dropped them, Fikrul was a smoking pile of robes and armor in the middle of the floor. Dark ether poured out of him like fog.

Nell pulled off his Archon helmet, which had great angular wings on either side, and crammed it on top of her own helmet. It slid on about halfway.

"That's what you get for shooting me when I was still down, jerkwad," she snarled.

"I wonder if it will ever be possible to make peace with the Eliksni," Jayesh said, gazing sadly at the dead alien. "Spider is reasonable enough."

"You wouldn't have made peace with this one," Kari said. "He thought his kind should be turned into zombies. He was an enemy to both sides."

Madrid stepped forward. "Don't get distracted. Uldren can't be that far ahead. He's the one we want."

He set off up the stairs, and his team followed him. Jayesh looked around as he took up a defensive position in the rear. "Petra?"

No answer.

She'd probably sneaked on ahead while they were busy with Fikrul. Jayesh shrugged and followed his team.

They climbed several flights of stairs, seeing nothing but debris on each floor. The sense of oppression weighed on Jayesh more and more. He found himself whispering, "Traveler, please shine your Light in this dark place. Don't let me fall before this presence. Preserve our sparks."

Phoenix said in his head, "Thick darkness lies between us and the Light, now. We're on its borders. A few more floors-"

They reached another floor and nearly crashed into Madrid, who stood at the top, gripping his scout rifle.

This room was more open than the others they had seen. No debris cluttered the floor, and round, stained-glass windows on either side let in daylight.

Standing in the middle of this room, alone, was Prince Uldren Sov. In one hand he held Cayde's personalized hand cannon, the Ace of Spades. In the other, he held a glowing white chunk of rock that every Guardian instantly recognized as a piece of the Traveler. Its Light resonated with their own.

Uldren, himself, had once been a handsome young man, his Awoken skin a medium blue with a glimmer of Light beneath. But his face had a gaunt look, and his armor hung on him as if he had lost too much weight recently. His pouchy eyes had turned almost completely black, even the glowing yellow iris nearly obscured.

"Oh look," Uldren said. "Guardians. Come to meddle in my affairs one more time."

Madrid raised his rifle and sighted through the scope at Uldren's chest. "I'll give you one chance to surrender."

Uldren laughed. He holstered the Ace of Spades. "There. I'm unarmed. Would you kill an unarmed man?"

"You did," Madrid said.

For a moment Uldren's face went blank, the blackness in his eyes completely erasing the irises. He looked like a corpse standing there.

Jayesh inhaled hard and raised his rifle like a shield.

Uldren's eyes cleared a little. "Oh, you mean Cayde-6. I suppose he was unarmed, wasn't he?"

"Did his death mean so little to you?" Madrid snarled.

Uldren tilted his head to one side. "I'm sorry. I didn't think crushing an insect counted as murder."

Madrid pulled the trigger. Uldren shimmered to one side, and the bullet chipped the far wall.

Jayesh grabbed Kari's shoulder.

"You'll have to do better than that," Uldren said, sounding bored. "I have important things to do. Here, have some fun. My treat." He gestured at the floor, then turned his back on them and walked toward the stairs.

A black spot formed on the floor. It expanded into a gulf of nothingness, and out of it crawled the Taken, screaming as they came.

Madrid swore and fired at Uldren again, but a wobbling, black Taken intercepted the bullet and vanished in a spiral of darkness.

"Uldren is Taken," Jayesh said, shivering where he stood. "Did you see him move? And his eyes? Traveler's Light, he's Taken."

His team gave him a horrified look. But there was no time for further discussion, because the Taken leaped at them, and the fight began.


	13. The teeth of Darkness

The Guardians had fought Taken before. These were mostly the remains of Hive thralls - fast, mean, and easy enough to kill. But as they followed Uldren up the stairs toward the Watchtower's upper levels, more and more Taken appeared. Some were Cabal, some were Vex, while others were ferocious high-ranking Hive. The fighting grew hotter the higher they climbed.

Jayesh found himself walking through one of his own nightmares. Everywhere were black, weaving shapes, sometimes splitting in two, or flinging shadowy bolts at the team that blotted out the entire room. He was burned by the touch of Darkness, then healed, then burned again.

_Protect your ghost._

_Protect your wife._

It became a mantra he chanted in his head. In reality, when he took a hit, Kari stepped in and shielded him until his ghost healed him. When she took a hit, he shielded her. It was the Guardian buddy system, ingrained into them by hundreds of battles. Nearby, Nell and Madrid did the same. If both fighters were wounded, the other two stepped in to protect them. It was a good system, and ensured that the enemy faced a constant barrage of bullets and grenades.

Guardians and ghosts worked together like a machine, grinding up the tower at a steady pace. As if the presence of Taken couldn't get any worse, they happened across blights. Huge globes of solid darkness, they clung to the ceiling and walls, darkening the stone, empowering the Taken. Some were bigger than cars. Jayesh tried to look everywhere but at them, sweat drenching his thermal suit beneath his armored robe. His team weren't as affected. They simply ducked around the blights and continued upstairs.

Then they rounded a corner and suddenly entered the Ascendant Realm.

If there was a portal, none of them saw it. The staircase they had been climbing was now a series of broken stones floating in the void. The tower's walls were missing in vast gaps, giving them a clear view of the blackness beyond.

Uldren's voice spoke from nearby. He sounded so close that they looked around for him, but the Ascendant Realm did strange things to sound.

"Sister, I don't know if I'm capable ..."

"Of course you are," said a rich, female voice.

"Mara Sov?" Kari exclaimed. "I thought she was dead!"

The voice of Mara Sov went on, "You have sacrificed everything for me, O brother mine. What is this final step in comparison? Release me from my long imprisonment."

Uldren hesitated. "No ... no, I can't do this."

Madrid ran forward, leaped onto the floating stones, and climbed upward. The stones didn't move under his weight, as if fixed in space. The others followed him.

"Is that really Mara Sov?" Nell asked.

"Sounds like her," Kari said. "But somehow ... I don't think it is."

"It's evil," Jayesh muttered, leaping from stone to stone with great care. "It's another Taken doing voices, somehow."

Madrid halted where the stairs began again, waiting for them. "You mean," he said slowly, "there's something in here ... that mimics voices?"

Kari landed beside him and turned to help Nell and Jayesh. "The Darkness can do everything else. It's all about deception. Why not a few voices? Cheap party trick."

"So," Jayesh panted, arriving on the steps at last, "If Uldren's not talking to his sister, who is he talking to?"

Nobody answered. They took a few steps and instantly returned to the real world, the walls intact once more, daylight streaming through the windows. They continued climbing stairs, tiring by degrees, no matter how much their ghosts healed them.

Waves of Taken greeted them, slowing them down, and more blights on the walls funneled them into ever narrower spaces. They stepped into the Ascendant Realm twice more, as if the fabric of reality had been worn so thin in the Watchtower that they kept falling through the gaps.

Somewhere, perhaps in the other dimension, they took a wrong turn. They wound up in a back corner of the tower, looking down the stairs. The staircase spiraled around the outside of the topmost room in the Tower, a vast space like a church, with beautiful stained glass designs in the windows. Soaring arches entwined to support the ceiling. And Uldren was inside, facing a vast, shimmering portal.

A pane of glass separated the stairs from the chapel, so the fireteam galloped down the stairs, trying to find the landing. As they did, Uldren lifted the piece of the Traveler's shard in both hands.

The Guardians slowed to watch in rising horror. The blackness in Uldren's eyes flowed out like water, pouring into the shard of Light, corrupting it. The shard darkened to a sick blue-purple, like a bruise.

"Like your nightmares?" Kari whispered to Jayesh.

He swallowed hard and nodded, his hand finding hers. "But it was you in my dream. And it was Light, not Darkness."

Uldren seemed unaware of the Darkness leaving him until it was gone. Then he seemed to lose his strength, staggering a few steps until he regained his balance. Slowly he approached the portal and pressed the corrupted shard through it.

The portal shimmered open like a curtain. Beyond it were stars and galaxies, and a shape that looked like a woman's. She floated forward and downward. Uldren held out both hands to her.

All four of their ghosts screamed at the same time.

"What? What is it?" Jayesh exclaimed, as the other Guardians said similar things to their ghosts.

"Don't be deceived, Jay!" Phoenix cried. "It wants you to see it as as Mara Sov! Look again!"

Jayesh focused on the approaching figure. With his mind alerted and his ghost heightening his awareness, he glimpsed something else. Sometimes it was Mara, and sometimes it was much bigger and uglier. But he couldn't quite see through the deception.

"What is that?" Kari breathed.

Nell squinted, hands cupped around her helmet view plate. "I know there's something else there, but I can't get it."

"I see it," Madrid said quietly. As they all looked at him, he added, "We may not be killing Uldren after all."

The intelligence disguised as a woman emerged from the portal and took Uldren's arms. He beamed, his ravaged face looking human for the first time.

Then the thing switched off the deception.

Where Mara had been now floated a huge ball of lumpy flesh. Its gaping mouth was lined with teeth like sword blades. Sick purple light glowed from within. Glowing, burning tentacles streamed from its front, wrapped around Uldren's arms, where he thought he had been welcoming his sister. Uldren screamed in sudden realization, thrashing and fighting the tentacles. But he was no Guardian, and it had already take all his strength to summon it.

The monster dragged him forward with irresistible strength and crammed him into its jaws. It didn't seem to chew him - it simply swallowed him whole. He disappeared into the maw, screaming.

The Guardians stood on the stairs, staring, dumbfounded and repulsed. Their ghosts cowered in phase, their terror bleeding into their Guardians. Jayesh retreated from the window, wrapped his arms around himself, and retched.

"Can we kill that thing?" Nell asked.

"We can try," Madrid said. "Come on, team. Uldren might live for a while, if we're quick."

They followed him down the stairs, Jayesh in the rear. "You think he'll survive inside that thing?" Kari exclaimed. "It's some kind of Taken spaghetti monster! Probably has a gullet like a food processor!"

"I came to kill Uldren," Madrid snapped. "Some monster isn't going to do it for me. If I have to saw it open and drag his corpse out of its belly, then I will."

They arrived on a landing with a high doorway leading into the chapel. The Guardians rushed inside and took cover behind two ornate pillars just inside. The Taken monster whipped around to face them, the jaws opening and closing. Uldren screamed from inside.

"Well, he's still alive at the moment," Jayesh muttered, reloading his rifle and watching his hands instead of the monster.

"Guardians," said Mara's voice in their minds. "You were fools to come here. I have torn the veil, opening the Dreaming City to be Taken. You have failed."

Rifts opened in the floor and walls. Taken of every variety crawled out, filling the room with their screams. The daylight dimmed to gray.

"Fight now," the monster crooned. "Fight until your Light dwindles to a flicker. Fight until your ghosts faint. Fight until your weapons are empty and your hearts fail. Then I will devour you as I have devoured the Awoken Prince."

The voice bled darkness into their minds, harmonizing with the shrieks of the Taken. Madrid let his rifle hang from its strap and wrapped his arms around his head. Kari reached out to clasp hands with Jayesh. His head slumped forward, his breathing coming in labored rasps.

Nell cowered beside Madrid, mentally cradling Hadrian. He had whispered, "A Taken Servitor," and had gone catatonic. He hung in phase, his spark dim with the immensity of his terror, not responding to Nell's thoughts.

"Hadrian," she thought, "you have to help me kill it. Please, Hadrian. Wake up and get ready to heal. Hadrian!"

He remained frozen, touched by Darkness and crippled by fear.

So it was Nell, among all the Guardians, who stepped out from behind the pillar and faced the monster and its army. Knowing full well that Hadrian wouldn't heal her, she raised her hand cannon and said, "You should have stayed in Dimension X. I'll bet in this dimension you can be killed. And I'm gonna try my damnedest to murder you." She emptied an entire magazine into the monster's open jaws.

The monster flinched.

They all felt it - a lessening of the Darkness, a wavering of the will bent upon them. Doubt entered its mind for the first time. And its doubt brought sudden courage to the Guardians. They sprang out of hiding on either side of Nell, pouring bullets into the monster and its swarm of Taken.

The fight was a hard, desperate one. As if the Taken weren't awful enough, with their quick movements and burning projectiles, the monster floating behind them periodically rained void fire on the Guardians' heads.

Jayesh fought through his fear and loathing, the horror of Uldren being both Taken and eaten. The sight of the eldritch monster hanging in the air made his brain try to shut down. Sometimes, if he looked at it too long, he blacked out, and only returned to himself when his pulse rifle clicked on an empty magazine.

His ghost healed him as quick as he could, but Phoenix was fighting a battle, too. The monster whispered to Jayesh of defeat and pain, using the same channel ghosts used to communicate with their Guardians. Phoenix constantly blocked this channel, and the monster worked constantly to reopen it. As a result, Phoenix heard every word it said and shielded his Guardian from the brunt of its psychological attacks. He told himself it was no worse than filtering Jayesh's hate mail during the media smear campaign.

Jayesh stayed close to Kari, often fighting back to back with her when the Taken surrounded them.

Kari knew exactly how her husband felt about Taken, and she was in full-on protector mode, ready to shred anything that thought about hurting him. She drew on her new super power over and over, firing a concentrated arc beam from her right palm, cooking through multiple enemies at once. She couldn't wait to use it on the monster. Her ghost was equally adept at filtering out the monster's whispers, so she fought without hearing it.

Nell abandoned Madrid and went leaping around the chapel by herself, flinging grenades and glowing fire-knives at the monster. This kept it so distracted, it didn't pour annihilation upon her friends as often as it intended.

Nell forgot that she was fighting for the Traveler, or the Vanguard, or anything lofty about being a Guardian. All she cared about was her hurting, abused ghost, and his palpable terror of the Taken monster.

"I'll kill it for you," she reassured him. "I'll get rid of it, don't worry."

When the monster spoke to her in Hadrian's voice, it made the mistake of not imitating his timid personality. "Why do you fight so hard? I am nothing, you are nothing!"

Nell laughed at it. "Did somebody sneeze? Because I think I lost my meatball. Oh wait, there it is!" She ran by and slashed off a tentacle. The monster shrieked.

Madrid tried his usual strategy of sniping from a distance. But his rage had cut him off from his ghost, and while she kept him healed, she couldn't filter the voices.

"You think you're strong enough to avenge me?" Cayde's voice said in his head. "Sorry, buddy, but your Light's gotta be a lot stronger than that."

Jayesh seemed to say, "Just drop out of the fight, Madrid. No point in you being Taken, too."

"Guardians can't be Taken!" Madrid retorted, firing at the monster.

"Sure they can," replied something that sounded like Jayesh. "I found that out first hand. Look, you can't fight without your ghost, and you've been driving her away since Cayde died."

"It's true," Cayde's voice chimed in. "She could have healed me if she'd tried. I didn't have to die. Guess where I am now? Little hint - I never made it back to the Traveler."

A Taken appeared in front of Madrid that looked an awful lot like an Exo Hunter. A horribly familiar one. Madrid stared at it, his hands frozen on his rifle.

The Taken shrugged in a very Cayde-like way. "Honestly? The Darkness isn't so bad. Kind of like serving the Vanguard. Go here, do that. But I have a lot less paperwork now."

Madrid opened his mouth to respond, but no words came to him. Was this real? It couldn't be real. Despair crept through him, stealing his will to fight. If Cayde was Taken, then killing Uldren made no difference. Killing the monster meant nothing. The Darkness had triumphed. His rifle slipped from his hands.

"That's more like it," said shadow Cayde. "You tried hard, buddy, you know you did. And it's okay. The Darkness has always been stronger than the Light. No point denying it. Might as well join the winning side, huh? After all, we aim to misbehave."

He pointed at the rest of the fireteam. "I'll give you a little tip. You see that warlock guy? Just slapped down a healing rift. Killed a lot of my buddies. We want him gone. Not just temporarily dead - the chimera wants to devour him next. Got that, Hunter? Just a little favor for your old Vanguard."

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Rose was wailing at him not to listen. But Madrid ignored her. He drew his hunting knife and crept out of hiding behind the pillar, stalking Jayesh.

Behind him, the illusion-Cayde fizzed into nothing.

* * *

As hordes of Taken pressed in on all sides, Jayesh had summoned his fire sword and slammed it into the ground. The shockwave instantly killed about fifty of their enemies. Pure, blessed Light glowed from the ground, healing and empowering himself and Kari. The Taken were reluctant to enter the circle, so Jayesh and Kari concentrated fire on the monster.

The monster was looking the worse for wear, great rents in its sides bleeding black smoke. The grenades they had pitched into its mouth had shattered its teeth, and several of its ethereal tentacles were missing. It fired blast after blast of void energy at them, trying to destroy the circle. But Jayesh kept one hand on the sword, drawing on his connection to the Traveler, absorbing each blast.

"Even though I walk through the valley of shadows," Jayesh chanted, "I fear no Darkness! You are with us, Traveler. Your Light heals and protects." Focusing his mind on the Light kept him from blacking out during the fighting - mostly. He had to look at the ground beneath the monster instead of the monster itself, or he'd go as catatonic as Hadrian.

He glimpsed Madrid out of the corner of his eye, but assumed the hunter was only hurrying to stand in the circle. Jayesh glanced around for Nell. She was across the room, fighting Taken, cut off from her team. He fired at the Taken surrounding her, trying to open a path to the circle-

A knife slammed into Jayesh's back. The rifle flew from his hands, the breath leaving his body in a blast. What was happening? Had someone thrown a knife and he'd gotten in the way?

A strong arm wrapped around him from behind. The knife tore out and stabbed Jayesh in a fresh place. Jayesh tried to scream, but his lungs were empty. The healing circle died away, the sword fading. The monster stopped attacking, watching in approval.

"Madrid's attacking you!" Phoenix exclaimed in his head. "Rose, why?"

Her voice replied, "The voices told him to! I can't block them!"

Still gripping Jayesh in one arm, Madrid drew his sidearm and fired at Kari. She instantly leaped high in the air to avoid him. "Madrid! What the hell! You're fighting us?"

Madrid didn't answer. Breathing hard, he dragged Jayesh toward the monster. It waited, bleeding jaws open, dripping saliva and black blood.

"Oh no," Jayesh thought, with a vivid memory of Uldren disappearing down that same gullet. "No, no, no, no!" He struggled, fighting and twisting, and forced Madrid to drop him. He scrambled to his feet and tried to leap to safety, but Madrid grabbed his robe and dragged him back to the floor.

Jayesh landed on his feet, feeling Phoenix healing the knife wounds. He filled his lungs. "Madrid! Snap out of it!"

"It wants you," Madrid panted raggedly. "Cayde said so."

"Cayde?" Jayesh scanned the Taken around them, seeing none that resembled the Hunter. But in doing so, he took his eyes off Madrid.

Madrid threw his knife and caught Jayesh in the stomach, just below the robe's armor. Jayesh doubled up, gripping the knife hilt and yanking it out. Madrid seized the knife, grabbed his wounded companion, and hauled him toward the monster. It extended its tentacles, reaching for Jayesh-and Madrid, too.

At that second, Kari slammed down from on high, both booted feet hitting Madrid in the back. The impact flattened him to the stone. Kari shot him in the back of the head. "That'll fix you, traitor!" Madrid's body jerked, then lay still.

Kari turned to Jayesh in time to see him lifted off the floor in the tentacles.

Jayesh lay limp in the monster's grip, not resisting, holding his stomach where the knife had hit. Kari snatched at his arm, but her fingers couldn't find a purchase. "No! Jayesh! Fight!"

He kept his head turned away from the jaws, watching her instead of his oncoming doom. "I've got this," he whispered. "It's all right. Get back."

Kari retreated a few paces, panting, a deep groan rising within her as her beloved faced annihilation.

Jayesh closed his eyes rather than stare down the monster's prickly throat. The tentacles gripped him tightly, burning him everywhere they touched. The thing's breath washed over him, fogging his helmet, reeking of decay and rottenness. His senses darkened. For a moment, it seemed he was back in the wood, watching his tree be consumed by the blight.

Phoenix made a wordless cry of despair.

"Traveler," Jayesh said aloud, his voice trembling, "grant me Light. And courage. I need courage!"

As he had on Io, he reached desperately for the Light. Even though the Darkness sat so heavily on this place and his spark was about to be extinguished, Jayesh's cry reached the Traveler. A slender beam of Light, no wider than a hair, touched his soul.

The monster thrust him into its jaws, the broken teeth closing on him, piercing his body in dozens of spots, seeking to pierce his heart and draw out his spark for consumption. Jayesh screamed, as Uldren had done. But many teeth were broken, and though they pierced his armor and flesh, they couldn't reach his heart.

The crushing pain sent his mind reeling back to when he had died multiple times in a cave-in, resurrecting only to feel the same crushing weight and die again. But this was worse, because the very touch of the thing on all sides was sucking the vitality from him. Light trickled out of his fingertips and vanished into the purple flesh an inch from his face. Even in phase, Phoenix was bleeding, too.

Jayesh hauled back his Light, feeling like he was in a tug of war with a tank, and managed to summon his fiery sword.

At its burning touch, the jaws sprang open, cringing away from the searing heat. The draining pain of the teeth withdrew. Jayesh rose on his knees, reeling in agony and sickness, fighting his own body, which wanted so badly to pass out and give in to the Darkness.

With the last of his strength, he drove the sword into the flesh beneath him and reached for the seed of light within him, wordlessly pleading for the healing rift.

Most of Jayesh's own Light was gone. Phoenix feebly clung to life, his own spark barely a flicker, holding on by sheer determination. He felt Jayesh's silent cry for Light, any Light, and Phoenix had none left to give.

But even then, Phoenix was resourceful, and refused to let his Guardian down. So he reached for the next link in the chain:

Kari.

Kari was nearby, watching helplessly, afraid even to shoot the monster for fear of hitting Jayesh. Her Light burned in all the more anguish because of her desperate love for the man dying in the Darkness's teeth. When Phoenix reached for her Light, Neko poured Kari's super into him.

Phoenix passed the full charge back to Jayesh.

What exploded out of Jayesh's sword was not fire, but lightning.

It opened a healing rift there inside the monster's jaws, but this one crackled with lightning bolts. Spheres of Light fired charge after charge of Light energy into the monster's mouth, throat, and gut. Jayesh's horrible wounds healed and vanished. He glimpsed the monster around him as its veins filled with Light, filling and filling, its greedy, leech appetite drawing in far too much.

The monster burst into fragments that vanished in black smoke and screams. The Taken, held there by its will, shrieked and dissolved into nothing, the portals connecting them to the Darkness closing. Jayesh hit the floor and covered his head as debris and slime rained down. Nearby, Uldren's body smacked into the stone and lay still.

The monster's fragments disappeared. Silence fell.

Jayesh cautiously lifted his head, wiping his smeared faceplate to look for enemies. The room was empty. He sat up, barely finding the strength to do that much.

Then Kari was there, helping him sit up, embracing him, despite the blood and slime covering his robes. "Are you all right? Oh, Jay, Jay, Jay ..." She wrapped her arms around his head and shoulders, still trying to shield him, holding him tightly. Her body trembled.

Jayesh found that he was shaking, too. He rested in her arms, trying to breathe steadily, trying to control himself. Delirious horror washed through him in waves. He couldn't even form words yet, couldn't reassure Kari that he was all right - because he wasn't. The only Light left inside him was hers, a crackling arc charge, chaotic and unfamiliar. Phoenix was there, a weary, flickering spark. Jayesh mentally gathered him in and hugged him, too. The ghost's spark brightened a little and stopped flickering.

"I used your Light," Jayesh whispered to Kari.

"I felt it," she whispered back. "I couldn't do anything else but let our ghosts pass it to you. Jay, I'm so sorry-" She began to cry.

He sat up a little, enough to slip an arm around her shoulders. "It's all right," he whispered over and over. "It's all right, lovelight. We made it." Comforting her comforted him, too. He reached for Neko, who, like Phoenix, was battle-weary, his spark dim. Jayesh pulled him in, too, hugging them all.

Nearby, Uldren lay on the floor, his open eyes staring, corpse-like, at the ceiling.

Madrid was dead, the back of his helmet splattered with blood. As they looked, Rose slowly phased into sight above his body. But she hung in the air, making a soft keening sound, and didn't resurrect him.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered to Jayesh. "I'm afraid to raise him. I don't know what he'll do."

Nell approached them wearily and sat down beside them. "I saw the whole thing," she said. "Stupid monster with the stupid voices."

Kari put an arm around Nell, too. The team sat there, breathing, recovering.

"I knew I had my sword," Jayesh said, trying to process. "I didn't expect the monster to suck the Light out of me." His arm tightened around Kari. "Good thing I've got you." He grinned a little. "Wait until everybody is sitting around talking about big baddies they've killed. I've got the best story yet."

Kari laughed through her tears.

Beside them, Nell summoned her ghost. Hadrian lay in her hands, gazing up at her.

"We killed it for you," she told him.

He flicked off the lower portion of his eye light, making a cartoony smile expression. Then he whispered, "Thank you. I'm sorry I'm such a weakling."

"You woke up enough to keep me healed," Nell said. "That's all that matters." She nodded toward Madrid. "What should we do with him?"

Hadrian floated into the air and looked at the dead Guardian and his hovering ghost. "I don't know, honestly."

Jayesh and Kari looked, too. Their companion looked so pathetic, spread-eagled on the floor.

"He tried to feed me to the monster," Jayesh said in disbelief. "Madrid. I just ... can't believe it."

"It was the voices," Rose said, her voice thin and soft in the huge room. "They pretended to be Cayde. A Taken Cayde. And when Cayde asked him to eliminate you, he obeyed. Didn't even question. I'm afraid of how strong a hold the Darkness has on him."

Jayesh scrambled to his feet, a new fear welling through him. "Cayde was Taken?"

"No," Rose replied. "The thing he saw didn't exist. I scanned and scanned. Taken have a certain signature, and this thing was ... nothing. An image sent to deceive."

Nell and Kari climbed to their feet, too. They all gazed at Madrid.

Finally Kari said, "Cover him, everyone. If he comes back and keeps trying to kill us, he won't get far."

"You - you'll have to kill me," Rose said brokenly. "If he's joined the Darkness ... I won't try to escape."

Phoenix whispered in Jayesh's mind, "If you kill her, I'll make you pay for the rest of your life."

"I hope I don't have to," Jayesh thought. "But if he comes back and goes for our throats, I may not have a choice."

Nell relieved Madrid of his knives and scout rifle. Then Rose hesitantly mended her Guardian's wounds and restored him to life.

Madrid stirred with a groan, pushing himself up and rubbing the back of his head. Then he looked at his fireteam surrounding him, weapons ready.

"Fight's over?" he asked.

"Yes, no thanks to you," Kari snapped. "You fed Jayesh to the monster."

Madrid looked at Jayesh, his robes fouled with the monster's saliva and blood. "I take it you lived and it didn't."

"You could say that," Jayesh said. "So, which side are you on, again? Because if you've abandoned the Light, we can end this right now." He gestured to Rose, who floated beside Madrid, her eye fixed resolutely on his rifle.

"It used Cayde," Madrid said, placing both fists on the floor and leaning toward Jayesh. "Do you have any idea what it's like to see your own Vanguard, distorted and Taken, telling you to kill your teammates? I kept hearing your voice, Jayesh. You kept telling me to give up and crawl away. I wanted ..." He crumpled up, holding his head. "I just wanted it to stop. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Rose floated near his helmet. "It wasn't Cayde, love. It wasn't even Taken. It was an illusion sent to harm your mind."

Madrid huddled there, rocking back and forth. Rose gave Jayesh an imploring look.

He shook his head - her execution wasn't necessary.

Looking relieved, she phased from sight.

As if this wasn't enough, a few yards away, Uldren groaned and sat up.

Leaving Madrid a quivering mess on the floor, Jayesh, Kari, and Nell hurried to surround Uldren.

At that point, Petra Venj hurried in, her clothing torn, her usually sleek hair in disarray. "Sorry," she panted to the Guardians. "I fell into the Ascendant Realm and couldn't get out." She drew her sidearm and covered Uldren alongside the Guardians.

The Ace of Spades lay a few feet away from Uldren. Jayesh picked it up. The handgun's metal was badly corroded from its trip through the monster, but the painted Ace was still visible. Jayesh's heart hurt a little, looking at it, knowing it was all to remind Cayde that he had a son, no matter how much memory he lost.

He aimed it at Uldren.

Uldren tried to scoot backward. He was begrimed from head to foot in the monster's slime, his hair clinging to his face in wet strands. His eyes had lost the blackness that had once obscured his yellow irises. He looked sane, beaten, pathetic.

"Well?" he said. "Spare me or kill me, but get on with it."

"You deserve death," Petra said, holding her gun in both hands. "You raised the Scorn, empowered the dark ether, and opened the Dreaming City to the ravages of both Scorn and Taken. You've committed treason against the Awoken people."

Uldren sat straighter. "You don't understand. Everything I did, I did for her."

"Your sister would never ask such things," Petra snapped. "You should have stayed in prison, Uldren."

"You killed our Vanguard for no reason," Jayesh said. "He was in your way. That was all."

"I know where this is going," Uldren said scornfully. "You've passed a guilty sentence. The line between dark and light is so very thin."

Phoenix phased into being beside Jayesh. "He's beaten. Look at him. Please don't kill him."

Jayesh looked at the craven, unrepentant Awoken before him. Then he glanced at the other Awoken, Madrid, also sitting on the floor, head hanging. And he knew, in his heart of hearts, that this mission had never been about revenge, at least for him. It was about justice, and closure. Besides, he'd seen what the whispers of the Darkness could do to a man's mind.

He lowered the Ace. "Stand down, team. This is over."

Everyone looked at him incredulously. "This man murdered Cayde!" Kari exclaimed. "He opened the way for the Darkness to devour his own people! You're just going to let him live?"

"We're not Awoken," Jayesh said. "Spider was right. We'll restrain him and take him to stand trial. It's not our place to execute him."

Petra stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. "Do you hear yourself, Guardian?"

Uldren looked surprised, too. Then he scowled. "I'd rather take death. It'd be more honorable than being humiliated before my adoring public."

"Your adoring public _who will die because of you_?" Petra snarled. "You don't deserve to leave this tower alive."

Uldren opened his mouth to argue. But a gunshot rang through the chapel. Uldren's scowl turned to a confused look. He raised a hand to his chest, where a growing red stain spread across his tunic. Then he slowly sank sideways into the floor.

The Guardians and Petra looked at each other, wondering who had fired the shot. Then they turned to see Madrid slowly climbing to his feet, carrying his scout rifle.

"It's done," he said. He bowed to Petra. "I'll go with you you to the Dreaming City and stand trial, if you so choose."

Petra stared at him, biting her lip. Then she nodded. "Accompany me to an audience with the queen. She will decide your fate."

Madrid faced his fireteam with a deep breath. "My sincere apologies for my behavior. It won't happen again."

They only stared at him in speechless shock.

Petra looked at Uldren's body. "I'll send a team to retrieve him for burial. He was the prince, after all." She faced the Guardians. "Thank you for your help. If you're not entirely sick of the Reef ... the Dreaming City will need your help in days to come."

Jayesh nodded. "We'll see."

The three watched Madrid depart with Petra. Then they set off, themselves. Jayesh gestured for Kari to lead. Carrying his rifle limply, he followed her in silence, looking only at the steps underfoot.

"What's with you?" Nell asked him, about halfway down the tower.

He breathed a heavy sigh. "I didn't want Uldren dead. Or Madrid. And now ... they both might be."

With nothing more to say, they left the Watchtower without looking back.


	14. Epilogue

Their ghosts were exhausted.

After the battle to keep their Guardians's minds free from the whispers of Darkness, as well as their near-death experience with the monster, Neko, Phoenix and Hadrian slept in phase whenever they could - the long sparrow ride back to Spider to get the bounty, and the trip back to their ships for the night.

Phoenix awoke to a summons from Jayesh. He obediently phased into being, barely awake.

Jayesh lifted him in his fingertips and studied him. "Are you hurt? You've barely said a word since the tower."

They were in Kari's ship. Jayesh sat in his bunk in an ordinary shirt and pants, freshly showered, his dirty robes stuffed somewhere where nobody had to smell them.

"I was," Phoenix replied sleepily. "Those teeth, Jay. But I'm better now. Just tired." He didn't object when Jayesh cuddled him, closing his eye in bliss.

"Thanks," Jayesh whispered. "For everything you did. Handing me the Light. Keeping back the voices."

"They said such foul things," Phoenix whispered. "You'd have been just as crazed as Madrid if you'd heard them. They really wanted us to fight each other. Nothing kills a Guardian faster than another Guardian."

"I noticed." Jayesh lay back on his bunk, letting Phoenix hover above him.

Phoenix looked around. "Where's Kari and Nell?"

"Nell's in the galley, zoned out with a game on her tablet," Jayesh replied. "Kari's in the shower. I already had one. It's why I don't smell like meatball breath."

"Sometimes I thank the Traveler I don't have that particular sense," Phoenix said.

Jayesh lifted a finger and lightly twirled Phoenix's shell around his core. "How're you holding up, little light?"

"You mean after our trip into the maw of death and disgusting?"

"Yes, that."

Phoenix flew in a slow circle, trying to decide how he felt. "Well, I was pretty scared. But I knew you had Light up your sleeve. So I trusted you. It took every ounce of strength I had to trust you, but I did. And then ... those teeth. They cut me even though I was phased. Started drawing the Light out of me. When you called for your super ... the only Light I could reach was Kari's."

Jayesh gazed up at him, hands behind his head. "That was brilliant of you. I had no idea one Guardian could share a super with another."

"They can't," Phoenix said. He gave Jayesh a sidelong look. "But, uh ... you two have been mingling your Light for months."

"Is that what they're calling it, now?" Jayesh said, grinning.

"Just saying," Phoenix said. "When the Traveler said you and Kari were one, it was speaking literally. That's the only reason we're still alive."

Jayesh was quiet, thinking about this. "Probably another reason Guardians don't marry. Although I'm beginning to think they should." He heaved a sigh and rubbed his forehead. "I'm going to have nightmares for months. If not for Kari, I couldn't have pulled off that rift. And you know, the worst thing."

He stopped and shut his eyes a moment. Phoenix felt his grief and waited.

"I healed Uldren," Jayesh whispered. "When the rift went off like a bomb, it cooked the monster. But Uldren caught the blast, too. It healed him. I think it's why he revived the way he did."

Phoenix recalled those frantic seconds, the way the healing rift felt as Jayesh drove his sword into the lower jaw.

"Yes," he said slowly. "Now that you mention it ... I was aware of mending happening. But I thought it was healing you. The teeth pierced you in seventeen places."

"It did heal that," Jayesh said, his voice a little unsteady. "But I also healed Uldren, Phoenix. And then Madrid killed him in cold blood." He covered his eyes with one hand. "I wish Uldren had already been dead. I wish I hadn't brought him back. I watched him die. He should have stood trial, and we ... we murdered him. Just like the Barons kept saying."

"Hey now," Phoenix said, flying down and bumping Jayesh's hand with his shell. "It wasn't your fault. You tried to show mercy."

Jayesh lowered his hand and gazed at his ghost, his eyes blurred with tears. "I never thought healing someone would make me feel like a killer."

Phoenix felt his Guardian's guilt and grief, and it hurt him, too. Over the private ghost channel, he said, "Neko, tell Kari that Jayesh needs a hug right now. A big one."

A moment later Kari walked in, wearing a fresh jumpsuit, her damp hair wound in a towel. "Phoenix said you need a hug?"

Jayesh sat up, his wife sat down, and she hugged him. He hid his face against her neck and whispered the story of what he had done.

Kari sat very still afterward, rubbing his back. Then she said, "Jay, kindness isn't a crime."

"I enabled his murder," Jayesh said.

"You gave him a second chance," Kari said. "It's not your fault it went the way it did. Stop blaming yourself. We've all been played, Jayesh. The monster manipulated Uldren, it manipulated us, and it intended all along for him to die at our hands. It intended us to die at each other's hands. We're lucky we got out with our lives."

Her words sank in, harsh and comforting at the same time. Jayesh let them ease some of his guilt. But he needed more than Kari's forgiveness. He needed to lay things out before the Traveler.

"I want to go home," he whispered. "I want to see the Traveler again and ... and not be so blasted cold all the time."

Kari pulled his blanket around them both. "There. Any better?"

"A little." He held her close and tried to forgive himself for the events of that awful day. "I hope Madrid finds closure. I hate to say it, but I don't care if I ever see him again. Not after he fed me to the monster."

Kari gave a long sigh. "It was the voices, Jay. Blame those. Remember when we found him with his neck broken? He's been fighting the voices a long time."

"What were they?" Jayesh asked. "Was there a worm involved? I've heard worms speak before. I can't ... really remember what they said, but it wasn't whispers. Or people I knew."

"I don't know," Kari said, yawning. "Let me dry my hair, then we can go to bed. I'm ready for this day to be over."

"Me too," Jayesh agreed fervently.

As Kari departed, Phoenix reappeared, blinking sleepily. "Jay, just had a message from Rose. Madrid wants to speak to the team tomorrow before we leave. Sounds like he's making a formal apology."

Jayesh groaned. "Tell him we agree." He flopped on his bunk and pulled the pillow over his head. "Why is it so hard to be kind to Madrid, Phoenix?" came his muffled voice.

"Let's see, because he tried to murder you?" Phoenix said. "And he did murder Uldren?"

Jayesh lifted the pillow an inch. "I guess I do have an excuse."

"A small one." Phoenix burrowed under the pillow and snuggled under Jayesh's chin. "Now stop being so mournful and get some rest. It's over with. We did what we set out to do."

Jayesh tossed the pillow aside and curled up, holding his ghost the way he did when in dire need of comfort. When Kari returned and saw this, she instantly knew his state of mind. She crept under the blanket beside him. Jayesh moved to give her room in the narrow bunk, and fell asleep with his wife on one side and his ghost on the other.

* * *

Madrid met them at his ship. With him was another Awoken Guardian, a grim-looking Titan who kept his rifle ready.

"This is my guard, Telith," Madrid said as his team climbed off their sparrows. "He's here to make sure I don't try to escape."

"Escape from what?" Kari asked.

"The queen's service," Madrid said with a strained smile. "Let's go inside, out of the wind."

He led the way into the ship, and again they all sat in the galley, this time without the table. Telith stood at the door, watchful.

Madrid stood and faced them, shoulders slumped, head low. His blue skin was more of a grayish color, and his indigo hair was flattened from his helmet.

"Things aren't what we've been told," he said in a low voice. "We've been had, team."

Kari gestured for him to go on.

"Well." Madrid licked his dry lips. "Mara Sov is alive. But she wasn't speaking to Uldren. She's off in the Ascendant Realm somewhere. Got her a throne world. We spoke to her through a machine called an Oracle. She was ... displeased ... with me." He stood there a moment, gazing at the floor, as if reliving a rebuke that had left him hollow.

"But she also explained," he said, facing his team again. "The voices we kept hearing. The monster we fought was called the Voice of Riven. Riven, herself, was Mara Sov's pet Ahamkara. She's now Taken."

"Hold on a minute," Jayesh exclaimed. "The Ahamkara are extinct."

Madrid shook his head. "Mara saved one for herself. Who wouldn't want a dragon that grants wishes?"

Kari said, "So, we were hearing from a Taken dragon that kept messing with our heads. Why would it do that?"

"Riven is Taken," Madrid repeated. "But she retains her free will. Mara believes that Riven is bent on Taking the entire Awoken race. Riven may also have ties to Savathun, one of the surviving Hive goddesses." He smiled lamely. "The queen has tasked me with leading a team into the center of the Dreaming City, where Riven is manifesting. I get to kill the beast and take its heart to Mara Sov. Only then will she clear me of killing the prince." He gestured to the silent, watchful Titan. "Meet one of my teammates."

Nell leaped to her feet. "Can I come? I'll fight a dragon with you! I didn't know we even _had_ dragons!"

Madrid nodded. Then he looked at Kari and Jayesh. "I'm not asking you to help me. Not after how I treated you."

Jayesh stared at the floor, avoiding eye contact, and said nothing.

Kari stood up, fists clenched. "I should say not. I wish you the best of luck, Madrid. But we're not accompanying you anywhere."

Madrid drew a deep breath. "Fair enough." He looked at Jayesh. "Do you have anything to add?"

Jayesh finally met his eyes. "Listen to the Traveler. Don't face the monster without a seed of light."

Whatever Madrid had been expecting, it wasn't that. He blinked several times. "Uh, all right, then. I guess ... I guess we're done here."

He reached down, unclipped one of the ammo pouches from his belt, and handed it to Jayesh. "Here's the remains of Cayde's ghost. See to it she's buried with him."

Jayesh held the pouch in both hands, touched that Madrid had remembered. Maybe there was hope for him, after all. "I will."

Telith escorted them out of the ship, and Madrid locked the door behind them. He, Nell, and Telith summoned their sparrows and shot away toward the Watchtower.

Kari and Jayesh walked back to their ships, the cold wind buffeting them, letting the exercise clear their heads.

They climbed into Kari's ship, went to the cockpit, and sat in the seats.

"I wish Nell hadn't gone," Jayesh said in a low voice. "That's a suicide mission, and Madrid knows it."

"He's leading a team," Kari pointed out. "He's not going alone. And you saw that Titan. With three others, they'll have enough firepower to take down a Dreadnaught."

"Nell is untrained," Jayesh said, digging his fingers into his hair. "Not that it matters, now. They're gone."

Kari laid a hand on his arm. "Did you want to go?"

"No," Jayesh replied. "I can't face a Taken Ahamkara. I just want to go home."

"Me too," Kari replied. "But ... I'm torn up about this whole thing." She sat back in her chair and rubbed her forehead. "Madrid was my friend."

Jayesh laid a hand on her shoulder. "Mine, too. That's why this stings. The Darkness turned friends against friends."

"How do we fight that?" Kari said, looking at him imploringly.

Jayesh shook his head. "That's one thing I mean to ask the Traveler."

* * *

Upon arriving home at the Tower, Kari and Jayesh gave their reports about what they had seen and done at the Reef, and why they had returned without Nell. This was followed by a long, private debriefing by Zavala and Ikora.

After the warlocks were officially reprimanded for sneaking to the Reef without leave, their commanders were extremely interested in the intelligence they had gathered. The Scorn, the Barons, Uldren and the thing he had summoned, Madrid's madness and quest to kill an Ahamkara - every point was thoroughly discussed and analyzed. Other Guardians had returned from the Reef with sketchy reports, but Kari and Jayesh had gone the deepest into the conspiracy.

They were dismissed hours later, exhausted and hungry. The warm afternoon sunlight slanting into the Tower felt hugely, generously warm. Jayesh found himself loosening his shoulder straps to let his robe hang open.

"Let's grab food and eat outside," Kari suggested.

This they did, securing a table at a cafe that overlooked the Last City and the Traveler's cracked, white globe. The late sun tinted it a soft gold, the shadow side a cool blue.

Their ghosts emerged from phase, opening their shells like cats stretching after a long nap. "It feels so good to be home," Phoenix said. Jayesh caught him and tossed him into the air. Phoenix floated down like a balloon, chuckling, letting Jayesh toss him again.

Neko flew in spirals around Kari's head, landing on her hair, then dodging when she tried to shoo him away.

When these high spirits had died down, Kari unwrapped her sandwich. "Have you talked to it yet?" she asked, nodding at the Traveler.

"No time," Jayesh said. "It takes a little meditation to get to where I'm ready to listen. Zavala? Not so great for meditating." He unwrapped his own sandwich, took a huge bite, and groaned in bliss. "So much better than ration packs!"

"If I had to eat one more cracker with that bean goop on top, I was going to take a vow of starvation," Kari said.

They devoured their dinner, relishing the fresh bread, fresh meat, and fresh vegetables. A warm breeze fanned their faces, and their ghosts chased each other and other ghosts in and out among the cafe's tables and patrons.

Jayesh had finished, and was simply gazing into the distance, when he suddenly sat up straight, eyes widening. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Kari started to say. Then she stopped as a musical tone reached her ears. It instantly made her think of glowing white trees and and red flowers.

Then she and Jayesh stepped into a vision. They knew that they both still sat at the table in the busy Tower cafe. But they also walked with the Traveler through a grove of the white trees, the silver leaves whispering above them.

"Welcome back, my Guardians," the avatar said. He looked the same as Jayesh remembered, swathed in a white and gold robe with a hood that concealed his eyes. Kari had never seen him before, and studied him closely.

"Traveler," Jayesh said, "we've walked in such darkness since we last spoke. Do you know about the Voice of Riven?"

"I was with you when you drew on my Light," the Traveler replied. "I know your bravery." He turned to Kari. "In the same way, Guardian Kari, I know your loyalty and courage. You gave up a friend in exchange for your husband, though it tore your heart to do so."

She nodded, a lump forming in her throat.

Jayesh stopped and faced the Traveler earnestly. "Traveler ... did we do the right thing? Uldren died because of us. I tried to spare him."

"You did," the Traveler said. "And you did what you could to help Guardian Madrid, though his wounds run far too deep for you to touch. Both of you performed to the best of your abilities. Both of you did what you knew was right, as far as you understood."

"I killed Kaniks, though," Kari said softly. "And the Darkness liked it."

The avatar faced her soberly. "You speak truth. You endangered not only yourself and your team, but your own heart, Kari. Such things are not easily undone. Guard yourself, lest it happen again, and the Darkness gain an ever-expanding foothold in your life."

Kari nodded with a touch of icy fear.

"Traveler," Jayesh said, "the Darkness claimed that Cayde-6 had been Taken."

"The Darkness lies," the Traveler replied. "I received his spark, myself. Look." He turned, pointing through the trees.

In the distance strolled a man, a woman, and a child. They held hands and laughed as they walked. For a second the man glanced at the Guardians. Something about the shape of his face reminded them of the Exo he had once been. Then he grinned and returned his attention to his family.

"Was that him?" Kari exclaimed. "He looked so ... happy."

"He is at peace," the Traveler said. "No longer shall Darkness sully him. And now."

The Traveler surveyed both of them. "Both of you are covered by my own Light. Have no fear, my Guardians." He extended a hand to each of them and rested it on their heads. "Receive my blessing. May your portion of Light continue to grow. Strength for the battle, courage of the heart, righteousness before all."

The warmth of Light flooded through them both, gracious, healing, powerful.

Then, somehow, Kari and Jayesh were back in the cafe, the part of them that had been with the Traveler solidly grounded in their own reality.

Kari touched her head where the Traveler's hand had been. It was warmer than the rest of her hair. "What was that?" she breathed.

Jayesh half-rose from his chair, looking around, as if expecting to see the Traveler in the cafe. Then he sat down again, his eyes shining. "You were there. You saw it, too."

"I did." Kari laughed. "Your eyes are glowing."

"So are yours." Jayesh clasped her hands and studied her face. "The Traveler spoke to both of us. And ... and showed us Cayde." His voice dropped to a murmur, as if he didn't want anyone else overhearing.

Kari nodded. "And he's at peace. Light, I'm so glad he's not Taken." She held out a hand and called Neko, who appeared in a sparkle of light. "Did you know we just had a vision?"

"I knew something was going on," Neko said, tilting to one side like a curious puppy's head. "Your Light is brighter."

Phoenix appeared beside Jayesh. "A vision, and I didn't get to see it, too? What happened?"

Jayesh stood up again, beckoning to Kari. "Let's go home and we'll tell you everything." He drew Kari to him and kissed her lightly. "I'm glad we're home."

"Me too," she said, walking with him, hand in hand. The Darkness of the past few days seemed only like a bad dream, a lingering shadow on the edge of memory. The Traveler and the peaceful trees seemed much more real than the Watchtower.

* * *

In a few weeks, they received word that Madrid's team had slain the Ahamkara. Madrid stayed in the Reef to fight for his people, but Nell returned to the Tower, saying she'd seen enough monsters to last a lifetime.

Rose contacted her brother ghosts to let them know that Madrid had sought the Traveler's Light and visited Io. He hadn't heard the voices since, and was finally beginning to heal.

Mara Sov sent word to the Vanguard that she needed the Guardians. This led to a lot of delicate political posturing between the Vanguard and the Reef. But eventually, Zavala grudgingly gave permission for the Guardians to rotate through the Reef as they did the other planets. Since many Guardians had already been doing this on the sly, there was a collective sigh of relief.

Jayesh and Kari stayed close to Earth. They worked in the City and ran patrols in the various dead zones. Perhaps one day they would venture back to the Reef, but for now, home was where they wanted to be.

The end


End file.
